Blood Will Be Born

by Donnelly, Gary

  ‘This is just beginning Aoife, the writing on Esther Moore’s wall said as much,’ said Sheen.

  Before she could reply, Aoife’s phone rang and she answered it. It was Irwin.

  She listened, nodded. ‘Yes sir we will get on it right away, we’ll see you back at Ladas after,’ she said. She finished the call.

  ‘Irwin said our footprint from Esther Moore’s has turned up a match on the database,’ she said. ‘Local, a place called Belfast Heights, it is a psychiatric hospital. A car was petrol bombed there last night, the place was evacuated, total mayhem. Boot print found beside the car,’ she said.

  Sheen’s stomach dipped, but he kept his voice under control. ‘Why would our killer want to cause havoc up there, even if we assume he’s a Dissident,’ he asked. But the awful, sinking sensation in his gut told Sheen that he might already know. Maybe it was nothing, but the goose flesh on his arms and on the nape of his neck told him no, don’t believe it.

  ‘Irwin wants it checked out, and after he wants us back at Ladas Drive,’ she said. Aoife grabbed her coat, headed for the door. Sheen swept up his jacket from the bed, walked to the open door where Aoife waited and turned out the light, leaving the curtained room in gloom.

  Chapter 23.

  Outside the entrance of Belfast Height’s secure wing, the car had been removed but Aoife could see the place where it had burned. The compressed gravel of the drive was charred in a wide circle and the sandstone wall of the building was blackened. The press was there, one reporter she recognised from Ulster Television and a camera man. They were seated on a bench that was wrapped round a tree, eating from paper bags.

  ‘Come on, before they spot us,’ said Sheen, walking quickly up to the main entrance.

  Some looper Dissident, from the Ardoyne, or The Bone, wasn’t that what Cecil Moore had said?

  I want to hear that spoken.

  In public, before the day is out.

  She crunched over the gravel, held up her warrant card so the man seated behind a small counter on the other side of the glass doors could see it. He buzzed them in, looked from her, then to Sheen, a shadow of confusion passed over his features. Their faces, she had forgotten how they must look standing there side by side, the welt on her forehead and Sheen’s fat lip.

  ‘We need to speak to whoever is in charge,’ she said. The man at the desk nodded, fast and business like, and picked up the phone on the desk. He was muscular, short grey hair, the desk space before him clutter free and clean. He lodged it between his chin and shoulder as he pressed a button on the phone’s keypad.

  ‘Speaking as one former copper to another,’ he said quietly, looking up at her with the phone still cocked in place. ‘It’s a shambles. Never lost an inmate, not in my years here. Cuts, that’s the cause of it. Want the same job done with half the staff,’ he said.

  ‘Afternoon Gladys, I have two police officers here at front desk, they need to speak to Mr. Kinnard. Thank you, I will,’ he said, replacing the receiver and standing up.

  ‘I will buzz you in, then you walk straight on-’

  ‘Sorry, just a second, what was that you said? About losing someone?’ she asked. Sheen had stepped closer.

  ‘One of the inmates, I mean patients. During the evacuation, took himself off,’ he said.

  They followed the directions and were met by the Hospital Manager in the corridor outside his office. Phillip Kinnard was a man in his late thirties with glasses and a weak moustache. Added to the weary face and the blue woollen jacket, and Aoife’s overall impression was a secondary school Geography teacher too long at the receiving end.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Phillip Kinnard, the manager,’ he said, holding out his hand. Aoife shook and introduced herself, was about to do the same for Sheen when he spoke up.

  ‘The prisoner, inmate, or whatever you call them here, what was his name? The man who’s missing,’ said Sheen, his voice half raised. Phillip Kinnard did not reply immediately, he took stock of Sheen like a man who was used to working with the mentally ill.

  ‘We currently have one patient not yet accounted for. Most unusual, it has never happened before,’ he said.

  ‘Have you notified the police?’ said Aoife.

  ‘This man represents a danger to no-one. He has been under sedation level medication for the best part of ten years. He is probably sleeping in a ditch close to the hospital grounds. Our staff has been combing the area all morning, we will find him,’ he said.

  ‘Answer my question, please,’ said Aoife. Phillip Kinnard removed his glasses and pressed two fingers on the bridge of his nose.

  ‘No, we have yet to file a missing person’s report. It has not yet been twenty four hours, and as I said we will-’ Sheen barged past her, almost knocked her over, and grabbed Phillip Kinnard by the lapels of his jacket.

  ‘His name! Tell me his name!’ Kinnard’s face was a grimace of horror and surprise, his eyes mole like without the magnification of his glasses.

  ‘Sheen!’ she shouted, pulling at his shoulders.

  ‘Sheen, let him go, what the hell do you think you are doing?’ she said.

  ‘FFFryer!’ answered Kinnard. Sheen stopped shaking, but he still had a hold of him. ‘JJJohn Fryer is his name. PPlease, let me go,’ he said. Aoife pulled on Sheen’s shoulders again and he dropped him. Kinnard slumped into one of the plastic chairs against the wall outside his office.

  ‘He’s been loose since last night and it’s not even been reported?’ said Sheen standing over Kinnard.

  ‘I am sssorry, I was following protocol,’ said Kinnard shrinking into the chair. Aoife stepped forward and pushed Sheen back a step, stood between him and Kinnard. She looked at him, searching his face for an answer to explain this outburst, seeing only stone and rage.

  ‘Mr. Kinnard, the fire which caused the building to evacuate last night, we now believe it was started by someone we very much wish to speak to. It is important that we see any CCTV footage you might have, and speak to anyone who was present yesterday evening,’ she said. Kinnard nodded; this he could do. They followed him into his office, municipal furniture and a Narnia like view of the rising granite head of Cave hill from the big windows.

  ‘Of course. It was my car, that was destroyed,’ he said, glancing from her to Sheen as though the fact would in some way exonerate him from Sheen’s wrath.

  ‘I want to see John Fryer’s file, get it now,’ said Sheen. Kinnard picked up the phone. He spoke to Gladys, told her to bring Mr. Fryer’s file, a pause then a repeat that yes, she should bring it at once please.

  ‘Is your CCTV outsourced Mr. Kinnard? Do you use SecuriTel?’ she asked. Kinnard shook his head once.

  ‘No, too costly, it is managed in house,’ he said, nodding towards his ancient PC. Aoife spotted the silver cord protruding from the back of the computer, recognised it as an input feed from the CCTV cameras. Another lead fed from the computer, this one connected to a DVD back up. ‘The PC is pretty old, not a lot of memory, so we have a three day holding storage there, then it gets copied on to disc,’ he said, gesturing at the DVD burner. ‘It has enough space to take three months of feed, and then we wipe it clean and start to copy over it. Unless, of course, there is a need to preserve footage,’ he said.

  ‘This is the footage you are interested in,’ he said, motioning her to come over to his side of the desk to look at the screen. Sheen followed.

  It was all but useless.

  Black and white images, updating every two seconds from a camera angled to watch the door, not the staff parking area. At about 2am it recorded a flash of white light, and then a glow could be seen coming from the far left of the screen. If this was it, there would be no way of seeing who started the fire.

  ‘No other cameras out front?’ she asked.

  ‘There are, but none that watch over the car park,’ he said quietly.

  ‘We are going to need copies of what you have, please, last forty eight hours,’ she said.

  ‘What about where you ev
acuated the inmates? Do you have that covered?’ asked Sheen.

  ‘No, just the entrances and exits, not the assembly area,’ he said.

  ‘Then what bloody good are you?’ said Sheen who had lumbered over to the window. ‘I want a list of every visitor Fryer had in the last year, I want copies of the CCTV which shows who he met and I want to speak to any member of staff who were present, and I want it today,’ said Sheen.

  ‘Easy, he has only had one visitor, we can check the log,’ he said. A tap on the door, then a lady with a silver bun walked in without waiting to be told. Gladys, Aoife assumed. She had a thick brown paper wallet in her hand. ‘Ah, thank you Gladys,’ said Kinnard.

  Sheen walked over and tugged it from her. She observed him coolly, before she turned to Kinnard.

  ‘Anything else, Mr. Kinnard?’

  ‘Yes, please get me the visitor log, 2015-6, and see whether you can rouse Adeola. He was on late shift last night, but this is important,’ he said. Sheen had sat down, a dog with a bone, he had opened the file and was flicking though it.

  ‘Who is Adeola, Mr. Kinnard,’ asked Aoife.

  ‘Adeola is one of our ward nurses, he has cared for Mr. Fryer for some time and was working last night. When he wandered off,’ he said. Sheen scoffed, his nose in the file.

  Five minutes of heavy silence ensued in Kinnard's office. Sheen spent it flashing through the pages of the folder, then slapped it on his empty chair and returned to his vantage point at the big window. Aoife had checked the cheap Nokia phone, expecting some kind of taunt or command from Cecil Moore but found none, and also watched Sheen who had been transported to his own personal realm. Whatever it was, it had something to do with the missing patient, John Fryer. She reached across and lifted the brown manila folder with Fryer’s case history.

  She flicked through the folder, noted his age, height and weight, then his address at time of committal, Divis Tower. She knew it, it was close enough to where her Mum had lived, and died, where she had spent her early days as a child in the St. James’s Road area. It might be a worthwhile place to start looking, assuming John Fryer and his disappearance was important. She flicked further back, looking for more on Fryer. She stopped, several pages in, a detail catching her eye.

  H.M.P. Maze. The H Blocks in other words.

  Fryer had served time; he was a prisoner, PIRA. She glanced up at Sheen, who was still off with the fairies, staring out the window. He must have seen this when he read the file, but his anger and exasperation, it had started as soon as he heard a patient was missing, intensified as soon as he heard John Fryer’s name. Meaning Sheen knew that John Fryer was a patient, even before he realised one was missing from the Heights, and he knew he was a former prisoner. She read on, running a finger through the file as she scanned the information, found what she was seeking, the date, not of Fryer’s release, but when he was imprisoned.

  November 1994.

  It was possible; he had not been in prison when the Sailortown bomb exploded, which made him a likely suspect. Looking up from Fryer’s file, she could see the bruise on the side of Sheen’s mouth, remembered the ice pack on his table when she had visited him in the hotel. Hit with a bottle, he had said. But, who was it who had introduced the explanation about the Celtic and Rangers fans? Not Sheen, she was pretty sure about that. She had suggested it, and he had gone along with it.

  Perhaps there was another explanation, why a man on his first afternoon in Belfast would get a fierce enough hiding to almost put him in hospital. Such as going to the wrong places and asking the wrong sort of questions. She touched the bump on her head absently, aware that she was doing it only when she winced at the pressure applied there by her fingertips. Both of them had gone looking, and both had got more than they had bargained for. Sheen’s subterfuge was out. How long before her own was brought to light? And what exactly did Sheen plan to do if he found Fryer? The stone cold look on his face suggested he was not planning to shake his hand. It did not exactly bode well for her, or her first murder investigation.

  A crisp rap on the door, it was Gladys. Her eyes fell on Kinnard, hunched behind his desk, but this time she walked to Sheen and slapped the log, a thick, soft backed A4 jotter, into his chest, turned and strode off.

  ‘At least your log book goes back further than three months,’ said Sheen, looking over at Kinnard.

  ‘Should be at least a year, we retain all back copies, of course,’ said Kinnard from his chair.

  ‘You said John Fryer had one visitor? Did this person visit him weekly, monthly?’ asked Aoife.

  ‘Adeola well be able to give more detail, but from memory, Mr. Fryer was visited by one man on Friday mornings, though until relatively recently, he received no visitors whatsoever, poor man,’ said Kinnard. Sheen was flipping pages, moving from near the end of the journal, back towards the front. He started shaking his head.

  ‘You people are a joke,’ he said.

  She stood next to Sheen and looked at the book. Sheens finger found John Fryer’s name, skipped the weeks in turn. Each entry was completed in similar handwriting, but each week, a different name, as though a different visitor signed in to see John Fryer. Most names she recognised, though none had visited Belfast Heights.

  ‘By the looks of this, you have had some famous ghosts signing in over the past months. Theobald Wolfe Tone one week, Bobby Sands another, Gusty Spence, Gregory Rasputin, the list goes on,’ said Sheen.

  ‘Not recently,’ said Aoife, taking the book from Sheen and leafing forward, finding the most recent dates which led to yesterday, Friday 9th July.

  ‘Nothing for three months,’ said Sheen. For as long as the CCTV cameras would take to complete a backup and re-record over all the previous footage. The door rapped again, and Gladys appeared with a very large black man standing at the door.

  ‘Mr. Kinnard,’ she said, addressing only him, ‘Adeola is here,’ she said.

  ‘Bring him in,’ said Sheen.

  She ignored him. Kinnard said, ‘Yes, please bring him in,’ and told her no there was nothing else she could help them with right now. Gladys called Adeola in by name and he slowly entered, shifting from one gum shoed foot to the next, a block of a man dressed in a faded blue hooded tracksuit, at least 6 foot 5 inches and Aoife guessed 20 stones in weight. Kinnard got off his chair and greeted him. Adeola smiled weakly, let Kinnard clasp and shake one of his huge paws in both his hands, and then returned it to his side. He nodded first to Aoife and then Sheen as they were introduced by Kinnard. When Kinnard explained that John Fryer was still missing, Adeola’s smooth face creased with concern.

  ‘Adeola, did you notice anything unusual about Mr. Fryer’s behaviour recently, anything different that might help explain his disappearance?’ she asked.

  ‘Mr. Fryer not himself. He not spoken for so many weeks, he not moved unless I move him. I feed him, wash him, wipe him, everything. No more drawings with his chalks, nothing. It not make any sense that he wander off. I brought him out when the alarm sounded, in his wheelchair. Then someone tell me they need me to help a patient. Mr. Fryer gone, wheelchair gone too,’ he said shaking his head. ‘No way Mr. Fryer wander off, no way,’ Adeola said.

  ‘The man, the one told you to go and help the patient, did you recognise him?’ asked Aoife.

  ‘Dressed like a nurse, there lots of nurses in the Heights. The Secure Wing, the Old Hospital,’ Adeola said, waving one hand in a slow gesture of multiplication.

  ‘Fryer had a visitor, a man who came to see him on Friday mornings. Was that the same man, the one who told you to help a patient?’ asked Sheen. Adeola shook his head again.

  ‘I don’t think so. That man, I remember him. He had long hair, wore a baseball cap. He was blonde like goldilocks,’ he said, now breaking into a chortle, then a wheeze. His smile faded away.

  ‘No, not seen him for a time. Friday mornings, brought Mr. Fryer his tobacco. They talked. That man, he has a crazy laugh like a kookaburra, but he the only one. He the only visitor Mr. Fryer
had,’ he said.

  ‘If we send an artist do you think you could describe these men, the visitor and the nurse?’ said Aoife, turning to Kinnard on the last word. He glanced at her then focused his eyes on Adeola.

  ‘The goldilocks man, yes, I remember his eyes. The other person,’ Adeola tailed off, slowly shaking his head, a look of confusion on his face.

  ‘OK, we can have that arranged, the visitor will do fine. Thank you Adeola, you have been very helpful, she said. He nodded, heavy and slow, she could see the sleep in his eyes.

  ‘This just don’t make no sense. Mr. Fryer, he scared of the dark, lights on in his room all the time. Why would he go off in the night time? He even leave his Buzz torch. Never let that torch go after sundown,’ said Adeola.

  ‘Let’s see his room,’ said Sheen, already walking to the door and not waiting for an answer. Kinnard, Aoife and Adeola followed his lead.

  John Fryer’s room was more like a cell, one of many identical inlets on a corridor with a hard plastic hospital floor, smelling of disinfectant and stale greens. It was too small for all four of them to crowd in, so she stayed at the entrance. Chalk drawings covered the walls, lots of red and pinks, and tones of flesh. They were crude but clear; bloody wounds, close up and visceral. She shuddered. No books, just a battered pair of white trainers beside the bed, squashed at the heels and still laced up. There was an unopened packet of rolling tobacco and full packet of papers in the middle of the desk that was fixed to the wall. The message on the outside of the door had clearly instructed No Sharps. Sheen picked up the plastic torch which was on the bed.

  ‘Dat Buzz,’ nodded Adeola.

  Beside it was a blood stained gauze on the snake of sheets that partly covered the sponge mattress. He glanced at Aoife, and she got his meaning. She pulled on a plastic glove from her jacket pocket and removed a sealable, plastic evidence bag and carefully placed the bloodied gauze inside before closing it. Sheen looked round the cell, briefly studied the walls, looked beneath the desk, then returned his attention to the bed.