Death on the Line: A Northern Irish Noir Thriller (Wilson Book 7)

by Derek Fee

  ‘Duff,’ Graham and Davidson said in unison.

  Wilson continued. ‘Then we start looking for Duff and he’s nowhere to be found, but we do have a body in the boot of a burned out stolen BMW. What are the chances that that body is Mickey Duff’s?’

  Graham and Davidson both looked like a lightbulb had just gone off in their heads.

  ‘Mickey Duff works for who?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘He’s a courier for Davie Best’s drug operation,’ Graham said.

  ‘And a part-time pimp,’ Davidson added.

  ‘Not the kind of employee that you’d want to be in prison looking at a charge of murder or manslaughter,’ Wilson said.

  ‘Nice theory, Boss,’ Browne said. ‘We have no proof that Josh was beaten by Duff, we have no proof that his mother didn’t take her own life and we have no proof that the toasted corpse is Duff. And given that all three are now probably dead, we have little or no chance of finding any proof.’

  ‘But we’re detectives,’ Wilson said. ‘And we have some unexplained deaths, so let’s start detecting.’

  ‘Where do we start?’ Browne asked.

  ‘We go over every shred of evidence.’

  ‘What evidence?’ Browne asked. ‘We’ll discover that Duff probably beat the boy, but if Duff is dead it’s a dead end. We might find that Duff was responsible for Gillian McAuley’s death, but again if he is dead he’s never going to stand trial for it. The corpse in the car was a professional job. According to the pathologist, we may never find out who it was exactly. Forensics haven’t found any evidence in the car and there’s no CCTV in the area. It doesn’t look too hopeful.’

  Wilson had to admit that Browne’s assessment wasn’t far off the mark. He was about to continue when Chief Superintendent Davis entered the squad room. She had changed from her uniform into a white blouse and a dark trouser suit, which looked very like her uniform.

  She walked up to the whiteboards and glanced quickly at them. ‘I hear that it’s traditional for the chief super to buy the first round of drinks when there’s a result. So shall we say the Crown in fifteen minutes?’

  The smiles on the faces of Browne, Graham and Davidson gave her their answer. O’Neill would beg off as she always did. But she noticed that Wilson lacked enthusiasm. She would have to find out why later.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Wilson woke late, if you could call eight a.m. late. He remembered most of what had happened in the Crown and a lot of what had happened in the bedroom when he had returned home with Reid. Her place in the bed beside him was empty and he would have assumed that she had already left except for the noise of people talking. Reid must be listening to the early morning news. He hauled himself out of bed and headed for the shower. Ten minutes later and feeling considerably more human he made his way into the open-plan living room, dining area and kitchen. As he entered the room, he had to do a double-take, Reid was sitting at the breakfast bar, smiling widely at some comment made by none other than Jack Duane.

  Wilson sat on a spare stool at the bar and poured himself a coffee. He looked across at Duane. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been here all night?’

  Duane sipped his coffee. ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd. I’m just hearing about your exploits last night in the Crown. I noticed that I wasn’t invited.’

  Wilson glanced at Reid, who smirked in reply.

  He turned back to Duane. ‘Have you been here long? I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘Steph said you were dead to the world. I told her that you’d soon need to wake up. The boys at the top want to do a bit of glad-handing. You and I are expected to show our faces at Castlereagh at ten o’clock.’ He picked up a copy of the Chronicle from the stool beside him and threw it on the breakfast bar. The headline was in big print: Three men arrested for attempted murder of Chronicle reporter more arrests expected. Two paragraphs down was the official statement from the chief constable. ‘Your boss appears to have played a major role in solving the case. You and I played our parts under the supervision of our betters.’

  Wilson poured a second cup of coffee. ‘In other words we don’t appear anywhere in this article.’ He tossed the paper aside.

  ‘Precisely,’ Duane took the coffee pot from his hand and poured himself a cup. ‘Sure wasn’t it to be expected? At least we weren’t fired for incompetence.’

  Wilson laughed. ‘You always see the good in things.’

  Reid sat down beside Wilson and put her arm around his broad shoulder. ‘I was filling Jack in on the burned body in the car.’

  ‘Something to do with drugs, I’ll bet.’ Duane blew on his coffee. ‘We used to think we’d seen everything until a group of gangsters wielding Kalashnikovs attacked a boxing weigh-in at a Dublin hotel. They were dressed as gardaí, the bloody nerve of them. The money is so big that there are no lengths they won’t go to in protecting their business.’

  Wilson was thinking about how far Davie Best would go to protect his drug business. The deaths of a junkie prostitute and a courier wouldn’t even scratch the surface. Best and his gang had seen sights much more horrific in Iraq and Afghanistan than an incinerated body. ‘I think you’re right, Jack, it had everything to do with drugs and money.’ He looked at Reid. ‘And we still haven’t identified the body.’

  ‘And it’s likely we never will.’ She moved away from him. ‘Identifying a body that badly burned is currently state-of-the-art and we don’t have that capability here. We’ll stick him in the cooler for the present but, unless someone comes up with a significant bundle of cash or a new breakthrough in extracting DNA, we’re stumped.’ She bent down and kissed Wilson on the lips. ‘Enjoy your glad-handing session.’

  Both men watched her as she left the room.

  The meeting at Castlereagh panned out as Wilson and Duane had expected. The chief constable and garda commissioner both attended with their staff officers, and at the bottom end of the table, if you looked carefully enough, you could see the two officers who had actually been involved in the investigation into Thomas Kielty’s death. Except the case hadn’t really been about giving Thomas Kielty justice.

  It was a jolly affair with all the principals more than happy that the incipient threat of the UVF and the IRA joining forces in a criminal enterprise had been nipped in the bud. Wilson refrained from bursting the jolly balloon by pointing out that Hanna and Keenan were simply the tip of an iceberg. Keenan had been right about one thing. The political overtone that had been employed for thirty years as a cover for criminal activities was being eschewed. The politics of the province were just so much ‘guff’. Wilson only half-listened as the chief constable and garda commissioner praised all concerned. He totally switched off as the staff officers made comments aimed at ingratiating themselves with their betters. A quick glance across the table was enough to tell him that Duane had switched off as well.

  Wilson spent the meeting doodling on the pad that had been provided to take down the pearls of wisdom emanating from the mouths of the speakers. He drew a series of circles linking Josh and Gillian McAuley and Mickey Duff. They were in effect a family, albeit not a very happy family. And they were all dead, but in a sequence. First Josh, maybe accidentally as a result of a drug- or drink-fuelled rage. Then Gillian, perhaps by her own hand or at the hands of the two men who deposited her at the house on Earlscourt Street. He had already accepted that one of those two men had been Mickey Duff. And finally, Duff himself, certainly no accident, and a most horrific way to go. It was like that song about swallowing the spider to catch the fly. He drew a large circle at the top of the page and he wrote the name ‘Davie Best’ in it. In a smaller circle beside Duff’s name he put a question mark. He had expected a flood of dead bodies to attend Best’s ascension to the top of the criminal tree in the city and had been pleasantly surprised when his forecast had proved unfounded. Best’s deft handling of the takeover of the Rice and McGreary gangs was obviously a false dawn. Wilson was moving on to look at motive when he heard his name bei
ng mentioned. He looked up from the pad and smiled, assuming that was all that was expected of him. He was gratified when he was proved right.

  Wilson immediately returned to his previous line of thought. The killing of Josh McAuley was motiveless. He had already agreed with Harry on that one and pencilled in Mickey Duff for it. Gillian McAuley knew that Duff had beaten her son to death and would ultimately have cracked and put him in the frame. That couldn’t happen, so she had to go. Then Best saw that they were on Duff’s trail and that sealed his fate. If Duff was responsible for both Josh and Gillian McAuley’s deaths, he was a dead end. That left Duff’s murder. No evidence at the scene, no evidence that it was indeed Duff in the boot of the car, no forensic clues from the car. Someone had been bloody damn thorough, maybe someone with military training. It was time to have a word with Davie. He looked up from his pad and saw that the meeting was winding down.

  The chief constable and the garda commissioner would have a further meeting at which topics beyond Wilson’s pay grade would be discussed, followed by a pleasant lunch before the commissioner returned to Dublin.

  As they left the room Wilson turned to Duane. ‘You busy, Jack?’

  Duane smiled. ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘How would you like to meet the new top boy here in Belfast?’

  ‘Always happy to look in on the opposition.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Davie Best was supervising the finishing touches to his new club. He wanted to have a complete break with the past and so chose not to continue using the corner of the Queen’s Tavern where McGreary held court. Operating out of a club was a gangster cliché, but he was a fan of old-style movies. He also needed a laundry to clean the mountains of cash his foray into the drugs business was producing. McGreary and the Rices were old school. They’d started their careers by hiding the cash under their beds or below the floorboards of their houses. They had graduated to using go-betweens to stash their cash in the so-called ‘treasure islands’. When McGreary died, the tax-man went through his financials. The paranoid bastard had hidden the details of his overseas accounts from everyone, including his wife. The upshot was that the intermediaries and the banks cleaned him out. That wasn’t going to happen to Best. He was making so much money that he was happy to pay his taxes if he could legitimise his revenues. And that was where 69 came in. He had to admit the place was taking shape.

  Best was sipping a coffee and interviewing potential waitresses when he spied Ian Wilson and another man-mountain entering by the ground floor. If it just went on size, the guy with Wilson could have been his brother, but they looked nothing like each other. What the hell are Tweedledee and Tweedledum doing here? He dismissed the girl he had been talking to and told her to get a drink at the bar. The barman was about to accost Wilson and his friend but Best signalled him to stay where he was.

  Wilson looked round the room. He remembered that the building had been offices before it was transformed into a gaudy pleasure palace. In terms of drinking establishments, it was about as far away from a traditional pub as you could get. Davie Best was sitting at a table beside what looked like a dance floor. The young woman he’d been talking to had moved to a bar at the back of the room. Wilson looked to his right in time to see Richie Simpson scuttle away into the darkness like the cockroach that he was. He walked over to the table where Best sat alone. He was always impressed with Best’s cool demeanour. He supposed that a visit from the police was insignificant when you’ve been under fire in a wartime situation. Wilson pulled back a chair for himself and sat. Duane turned a chair around and sat with his arms across the back. They both stared at Best.

  ‘Detective Superintendent, I’m honoured.’ Best finished his coffee and put the cup on the table. ‘What do you think of the place?’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to become a patron,’ Wilson said.

  Best looked at Duane. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’

  ‘No,’ Wilson said.

  Best continued to stare at Duane. ‘I hear you’ve been busy lately in South Tyrone.’

  ‘You’re well informed.’

  ‘I read the papers. We’re both busy men so let’s get to the point. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I understand a man called Mickey Duff works for you?’ Wilson said. ‘Or should I say “worked” for you.’

  Best’s brow furrowed in his best theatrical parody of thinking. ‘I don’t think so. We’ve taken on a lot of staff for the club recently, but I don’t remember a Mickey or even a Michael Duff.’

  ‘I doubt he works in the club, but I’m assured that he’s heavily involved in one of your other businesses.’

  Best gestured at the room. ‘This is my business, Superintendent.’

  ‘I was thinking about one of your illegitimate businesses.’

  ‘This is my only business. And I have no knowledge of this character Duff.’ Best shot a glance at Duane, who simply stared back.

  ‘Are you interested at all in why I’m looking for him?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘Not really, since I don’t know who you’re talking about.’

  ‘I want to interview him about a deadly assault on a five-year-old boy and the homicide of his mother.’

  Best was coolness personified. ‘Then I sincerely hope that you find him.’

  ‘You heard about the body found in the boot of the car out in Helen’s Bay?’ Wilson asked.

  Best shook his head. ‘Shocking business.’

  ‘Remind you a bit of Iraq?’

  ‘I don’t dwell on the past, those who do end up in mental homes with PTSD. I could sit here all day chatting with you fine gentlemen, but I have potential staff to interview. Shall I send over some invites to the opening?’

  ‘I think that the corpse in the burned-out car was Mickey Duff and I think that you’re involved somewhere in his death, so now you’re on my radar,’ Wilson said. ‘You’ve come a long way in a short time, and like all criminals, you think that you’re smarter than us. Maybe you are, but one day you’ll make a mistake, maybe only a small one, but when you do, I’ll be there.’

  ‘When you have evidence enough to confront me, I’ll go to the station. Don’t come to my place of business again unless it’s to drink or ogle the girls.’ Best’s face hardened. ‘See yourselves out.’

  Wilson stood. ‘I see you’ve taken Richie on.’

  ‘He has his uses, he’s part of the project team.’

  ‘Richie’s a cockroach,’ Wilson said. ‘You know that the cockroaches survived the cataclysm that killed the dinosaurs. Simpson’s a survivor, I wonder will he survive you.’ Wilson and Duane turned and left together.

  Best pulled up some phlegm and was about to spit in their direction until he remembered the cost of the carpet and swallowed.

  Once outside, Wilson remarked, ‘That’s the new face of criminality in Belfast. One of the old timers told me that I’d be sorry to see him and his ilk gone. I thought at the time that it was bullshit, but, you know, he was right.’

  Duane put his arm around Wilson’s shoulder. ‘ You’re going to have some fun with that boy. In the meantime, I think that a celebration drink is called for, in a proper pub.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  McDevitt’s publisher had rented the Redeemer Central Church on Donegall Street for the launch of his book on the Cummerford murders. As the books were packed and ready to go, the launch took place just two days after McDevitt left hospital. Wilson and Reid arrived fashionably late. It was neither of their milieus and they didn’t feel comfortable making small talk with the literary community. Wilson took two glasses of white wine from the tray being held by a passing waiter and handed one to Reid. They toasted each other and drank. There was something in the air that Wilson couldn’t exactly fathom.

  Wilson had spent a good part of the afternoon with Duane. They had reminisced over cases they had been involved in and Duane’s stories reinforced what he already knew: not every case leads to a result. Perhaps the body in th
e boot of the Beemer was Mickey Duff and maybe he had been murdered on the instructions of Best. It was a working hypothesis, but it wasn’t proof. The odds were stacked against finding enough proof to put Best in front of a jury. He wasn’t pleased that Best was sliding away again. The perfect crime didn’t exist, but in the case of Sammy Rice, the body and the gun were still missing so there was no case. The Mickey Duff affair looked like a re-run for different reasons.

  Wilson was sipping his wine when he spied Lawrence Gold in the corner of the room. They glanced in each other’s direction at the same time and lifted their glasses to each other. Wilson knew that Gold was a brilliant barrister but even he didn’t win all his cases. He was looking for other notables he might know when he saw McDevitt speaking with the editor of the Chronicle and a lady wearing her glasses well down her nose who might well have been his agent.

  ‘She’s not here,’ Reid said.

  ‘What?’ Wilson turned to face her. ‘Who’s not here?’

  ‘The person you’re looking for.’

  ‘I’m not looking for anyone.’ He had to tell himself that he wasn’t lying. And he wasn’t happy that Reid had a hurt look on her face.

  She was about to continue the conversation when McDevitt intervened. ‘Thanks for coming.’ He kissed Reid on the cheek. ‘I’ve got to make a speech in a few minutes and I’m shaking in my boots. I can put words down on paper but they seem to get stuck in my throat when I try to get them out of my mouth.’ He leaned in confidentially. ‘We’re having dinner with some people from Northern Ireland Screen after the launch.’ He looked at Wilson. ‘I have some suggestions about who should play you.’