Blood Will Be Born

by Donnelly, Gary

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sheen.

  ‘Ah ha, if you want to thank me then find whoever did this,’ she replied, and started to walk off, her rubber shoes squeaking on the hard plastic floor.

  ‘I plan to,’ said Sheen.

  ‘You do that,’ she said, and then turned round to face him, her blue eyes like clear lights fixing on Sheen. ‘And you arrest them,’ she said, nodding at Sheen. She reached the L corner at the end of the corridor and took it, feet squeaking, her parting words hanging in the air.

  Chapter 10.

  When Aoife arrived at the hospital, Sheen and Irwin had been in the HDU for a little over five minutes. They had made very little progress.

  Sheen nodded to her as she walked in, and noted, despite the clinical surroundings, or perhaps because of them, that she had changed; the black blazer and trousers now replaced by a dark blue matching pair that better suited her complexion and blonde hair. He could smell a welcome waft of fresh perfume, apples, as she entered and he found himself inhaling it hungrily.

  ‘This is Jamie Anderson,’ Sheen said, speaking quietly.

  Aoife looked at the boy, and her eyes creased with concern. Sheen shared it; the young man propped up in the big hospital bed had his neck supported by a thick circular brace, three out of four limbs encased in plaster cast, monitor buds sprouted from his chest and a blood pressure cuff was attached to one wrist. A fluid bag and morphine drip fed an IV into the bruised top of one hand, and he had an oxygen mask over his mouth. Sheen noted a half filled bag of dark urine slung to one side of the bed. Jamie’s eyes were black and swollen almost closed, his top lip was split and inside his partly opened mouth.

  ‘He is only turned fifteen,’ said Irwin, breaking the momentary silence which had fallen. Sheen detailed the injuries which were on display before them until Aoife held up a hand and asked him to stop, which he did. Only in Belfast, thought Sheen, is this a lucky outcome.

  ‘Has he been able to speak?’ asked Aoife.

  ‘He’s in and out of consciousness,’ said Sheen.

  ‘E-Fit image from Belfast Heights was emailed through,’ said Irwin, passing her his phone. Sheen watched her, as she looked at the image he had already studied. Aoife’s initial look of scrutiny now relaxed into something closer to what he too had experienced when looking at that face; mild surprise, almost a disappointment. Sheen had been expecting some kind of Lombardo type mug shot, thick in the eye brows, deep set eyes, heavy stubble; a face that shouted thug, criminal, sub-human.

  What they had was a young man’s face, smooth and youthful and clean, long in the jaw, but with cheeks still holding a few ounces of puppy fat. His nose was ever so slightly turned up and rounded at the end. The chin tapered to a shallow point, adding to the overall ordinariness of the face. But what had really held Sheen, and what was probably holding Aoife was the eyes; blue grey and cold. Sheen had wanted to look away but found himself transfixed nonetheless.

  Aoife looked over at Sheen and he instantly registered their shared certainty. This was their murderer. Question was, who was he? Aoife handed the phone back to Irwin who said he had emailed it to both of them. She sat on the edge of the bed and very gently took Jamie’s sausage swollen fingers of his left hand in her own. Jamie moaned at Aoife’s touch. She quickly withdrew her hand, turned and looked up at Sheen, her eyes wide pools of concern. Sheen nodded to her, they were running out of time and at least she got some reaction from the lad, when Sheen had repeated his name Jamie Anderson had not even stirred.

  ‘I think you woke him up, that’s all,’ said Sheen. Then he nodded again and added, ‘Keep going, talk to him.’ If at all possible, get him to look at the E-Fit; it might be the break they needed, a name, just a name. Irwin passed his large screened phone over to Aoife which she took, obviously getting his intention. Aoife leaned in closer to Jamie, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she did so, once again started to cradle Jamie’s hand. The boy made another sound as she did so, this one thick and nasal. His lips were moving, and Aoife put her ear right up against his mouth. Words, or what passed for words, were spoken. Aoife slowly nodded, she had somehow deciphered it.

  ‘Your Mum is here, you can speak to her in a minute Jamie,’ she said.

  Aoife introduced herself. The first question she asked was the most obvious one, but Sheen quietly cursed under his breath. He was pretty sure he had the answer, and right now they needed a different name, one that would lead them to Esther Moore’s murderer.

  ‘Who did this to you Jamie, can you speak?’ she asked. Sheen saw his eyes were open.

  Nothing from Jamie Anderson, the room was full of the background hiss of the oxygen respirator, the intermittent bleep and buzz from the monitor behind the bed. The boy was scared. The fear was palpable, present in the small room like a malign spirit between the boy and them.

  ‘Do you know where you were, before the police found you last night?’ she persisted. No words from Jamie. Sheen saw tears running from the boy’s swollen eyes. He heard the sound of approaching feet, getting closer. They needed him to look at the E-Fit, and their window was almost gone.

  ‘Jamie, My name is DI Sheen, I work with DC McCusker. We will catch the person who did this to you, but now we need you to look at this, we think it is the man who killed your neighbour, Esther Moore. Do you recognise him?’ he said. He was breaking all the rules, asked a leading question, but needs must.

  Aoife raised the E-Fit image up so it was in Jamie’s line of vision, but the lad closed his eyes, started to moan and cry, shaking his head from side to side as best he could manage in the restricted hold of the neck brace. As he did so, the cast on his other arm clanked against the metal barrier on the other side of the bed, and the heart monitor beeped, a red light flashed. Aoife let go. The squeak of the nurse’s approaching steps stopped, and then sped up. She was running. She must have heard. Sheen snatched the phone from Aoife.

  ‘Jamie!’ he snapped. His puffed eyes opened in response, the crying ceased, but Sheen saw the awful trapped fear in his eyes. The nurse was back in the room. He ignored the her question of what was going on, and thrust the E-Fit image in front of Jamie’s half open eyes.

  ‘Do you know him Jamie? Did you see him, can you tell us his name?’ he said. Sheen felt a vice grip on his arm, but he refused to be budged. Jamie’s lacerated mouth opened, and he emitted a broken, high pitched horrible wail, but his eyes were open too, and he was finally looking at the E-Fit, and Jamie Anderson was nodding his head, he was nodding, he recognised the face.

  ‘Sheen!’

  All they needed was the name, Sheen asked him again.

  ‘SHEEEN!’

  He relaxed his arm, was instantly pulled away from the boy by the force of the nurse’s grip. She shoved him hard in the chest away from the bed, went to tend to her patient. It was Aoife who had spoken; she was staring at him, her eyes full of accusation.

  ‘He’s the best chance we have,’ said Sheen, hating the words as they left his lips. The nurse turned from the bed where Jamie had settled a little but was still crying. She pressed the morphine drip twice.

  ‘Get out of here, you’re sick,’ she snarled at Sheen. He felt a small but firm squeeze on his upper arm. Irwin, eyes on the floor.

  ‘That’s enough, let’s go,’ he said, leading the way. Aoife had already gone. The nurse turned back to Jamie and Sheen watched as the boy’s body almost instantaneously relaxed, like watching him die. Sheen was half out the door but he turned fast, walked back to Jamie Anderson’s bed and spoke in his ear, quieter than he had before.

  ‘Jamie, please mate, if you can hear me, just say his name, if you know it, please just say his name,’ he said.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ said the nurse, moving from the other side of the bed and coming for Sheen. She stopped at the foot of the bed, and Sheen was frozen too. Jamie Anderson spoke, his voice slurred and full of dope.

  ‘The Devil, he’s the Devil, he’s the Devil,’ he was saying, his words slurring into inco
herence as he finally drifted away.

  Chapter 11.

  Aoife picked up two tubes of white sugar and emptied them into the cup of bitter smelling coffee that Irwin had just purchased from the hospital canteen. She stirred the dark brew with the flimsy white plastic spatula. It warped in the heat. Aoife removed the stick, bent it between two fingers, and then twisted the stupid bloody thing until it snapped in two. She threw it across the table, blew on the coffee and sipped it. It was filth, too hot and now too sweet.

  Irwin sat down heavily on the booth seat next to her, it creaked. She could smell his stress sweat, mingled unpleasantly with the overcooked food odours that hung in the unventilated air. Sheen joined them, setting down a tray with three sorry looking croissants on plastic plates, covered in cling film, and a cup of tea. Aoife poked a hole in one of the cling film tents and pulled off a piece of pastry. It was hard, and stale, greasy in her mouth.

  ‘Well, that went well,’ she said.

  ‘It went as well as could be expected,’ said Irwin.

  ‘I think we can conclude that Jamie at least recognised the E-Fit,’ said Sheen. He sounded less sure. Rightly so, what he did in there bordered on harassment of a vulnerable witness.

  ‘Oh, he did alright Sheen. You traumatised him with your questions, and what did we get?’ she said.

  ‘Well, after you walked out he told me a name. Said it was the Devil,’ said Sheen. ‘Which in a manner of speaking is a positive ID,’ he said. Aoife raised her eyes, went back to work on the substandard breakfast before her.

  ‘Sheen’s correct, about the boy’s reaction anyway,’ said Irwin. Aoife silently cursed. Irwin was deluded if he believed they had just got anything of value from Jamie Anderson. The only thing they had managed to confirm was that the lad was damaged mentally and physically and so doped up that he could hardly speak. Irwin was on his phone, seemed buoyed, despite the let-down they had just experienced.

  ‘That was quick. The good news is that our DNA test on the hair found in Mrs. Moore’s bath has come back, and we have a match,’ he said. She sat up, Sheen too.

  ‘We have a name, someone with a record?’ she asked.

  ‘No, afraid not,’ said Irwin.

  ‘You said you got a match, if the database gave us that, it should also give us a name,’ said Sheen.

  ‘The name was Esther Moore,’ said Irwin. Aoife glanced at Sheen, but he also looked confused.

  ‘The DNA found in the hair sample was a family match, to Mrs. Moore, right?’ asked Sheen.

  ‘Yes,’ said Irwin. ‘It was a partial match to be exact. Meaning it could have come from a relation, a brother or sister, more likely someone more removed. Someone who had stayed there, not necessarily even this week,’ he said. She started to understand. Meaning the hair was most likely already in the tub before Esther Moore was killed. The match was useless.

  ‘Dead end,’ she said. Irwin said nothing. Sheen spoke through a mouthful of croissant.

  ‘Even so, the DNA is not our only lead. We have John Fryer, it’s time to start digging around in his world, whatever Oswald says,’ he said.

  ‘We can, carefully, but I don’t hold out much hope,’ said Irwin. Sheen looked at him questioningly. ‘I read Fryer’s Special Branch File, he worked in a small cell and the two other guys in his old crew are dead, and now Dempsey is too. No spouse, no recorded children; the guy spent his life on the streets, on the run or in a cell. For the last ten years, all we know is that he has been doing solitary in the Heights, then along comes the mystery man and poof. Fryer disappears,’ said Irwin.

  ‘What about Esther Moore? Is it worth going deeper into her family? This is Cecil Moore we are talking about after all,’ said Aoife.

  ‘Cecil has an alibi for his mother’s death, I spoke to him myself yesterday, and in fact I tend to believe him. Certainly, that man has no children,’ said Irwin, the disgust evident in his tone. ‘I am going to bring him in to answer for what Jackie Coyle has told us, I can dig around a bit more then, but my understanding is that Cecil has no living relatives, no siblings. He had a brother, but that’s a non-starter,’ said Irwin, sounding equivocal, and still chomping on the last of his croissant. ‘Anyway, it would not be a path that I’d be prepared to go down, even if I could,’ he added.

  Aoife’s heart skipped. When Moore was lifted it would be easy for him to show the video with Charlie Donaldson. Still, her gut told her to keep cool; it was not Moore’s way to cash in his chips at the first hand. The game he played was a longer one, she had some time. But he was dangerous. She needed to get her hands on his phone.

  ‘Why’s that then?’ asked Sheen, eyes peering from behind the white foam cup. Irwin did not reply immediately, he looked sullen. He washed away a mouthful of food with a slurp of tea before reaching for another pastry.

  ‘Cecil Moore is a scum bag, but he is also the black sheep. I can’t speak for his dead mother, but Cecil’s younger brother was police, RUC. A good man and a great copper, decorated, dedicated, life was the job,’ said Irwin. He was pointing his half eaten pastry in Sheen’s direction, his face growing red. A flare went off in Aoife’s mind, fizzing and fierce and white, then disappeared. She set down her coffee, closed her eyes, she had to think, to see. It was something about Esther Moore’s parlour, something that MacBride the CSI had said when she and Sheen had visited the crime scene. She almost saw it, but the fading flare dimmed and died away. She opened her eyes, still frowning, Sheen had spoken again.

  ‘Worth looking into?’ asked Sheen. Irwin shifted in his seat, made a humph sound, in that preparatory way he did when he thought he had an ace point up his sleeve and he was building up to use it.

  ‘We can take a run up to Roselawn Crematorium later on Sheen, see how much sense you can get from the poor guy,’ said Irwin, not smiling.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sheen, nodding. ‘Was he murdered, in the line of duty?’ asked Sheen.

  ‘In a manner of speaking. The poor chap took his own life. Pressures of the job I heard, plus he cared for his wife, she had, you know, some issues,’ said Irwin, leaning in towards Sheen and tapping one side of his temple with his thick index finger. He meant mental health problems; Irwin’s code was as universal as scribbling on an imaginary notebook when asking for the bill in a restaurant.

  ‘You knew him well?’ asked Sheen quietly. Aoife could feel something growing, like the anticipation of a hatching egg, only this one held information. Sheen could sense it too, he glanced at her and she nodded once, quickly, he should keep going.

  ‘Knew of him. Based out of Donegal Pass station. He once carried a primed bomb off a bus in Great Victoria Street, walked it away from a crowded area,’ said Irwin. Then he added, after a second’s pause. ‘It was different back then, before,’ he said, leaning on the last word. Sheen looked confused, he did not catch Irwin’s pointed comment about the RUC, but Aoife did. ‘When this police force was still the RUC, before Patten and the reforms,’ he said. Aoife could hear the venom in his voice, especially at the mention of Chris Patten’s name.

  The English minister who had recommended the root and branch reform of the RUC, the report that heralded a change in name, badge, iconography, uniform, complete renewal. The accolades of the past and the celebration of hard won achievements were consigned to the dust of a closed trophy cabinet.

  Suddenly the flare glared once more into life, and this time she saw what it illuminated. It was an RUC uniform. Then MacBride’s voice replayed to her, that tone of toying, mock lechery which he had used in Esther Moore’s home, describing the kind of weapon which could have caused the injuries to the old woman’s hand.

  Something long, and hard, DC McCusker, like a police issue baton.

  MacBride’s comment had seemed only borderline relevant then, but it shone brightly now. The PSNI were not issued with that style of old, hardwood baton. No, not the PSNI, but the RUC? Yes, the RUC most certainly were. Irwin was still talking, but Aoife had not heard his last couple of sentences. Her heart was skippi
ng in her breast. Irwin laughed, sounded dry and emotionless. She tuned in again, strained to listen and order her thoughts simultaneously.

  ‘You know what the ironic thing about it is, Sheen? That man, Cecil Moore’s brother, he was never got by the gun of a terrorist, never turned by some corner boy paramilitary waving a wad of dirty money under his nose. What killed him was progress, it was the police that he loved and gave so much loyalty to, we ended his career, and his life,’ said Irwin. A final flash in her mind, and the entire landscape was illuminated, stark and unmasked. Aoife stood up, nearly knocked her now lukewarm coffee.

  ‘Steady!’ shouted Irwin, lifting the remains of his own drink off the table, glaring at her.

  ‘There is no Dissident connection,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, thank you DC McCusker, try to keep up will you?’ said Irwin but she did not let him continue, there was no time, now she had it.

  ‘You wanted to know why John Fryer, of all the former prisoners in Belfast, was the one our killer selected?’ she said. Her heart was pounding now, all considerations of Cecil Moore and his vile blackmail forgotten, replaced by this pulse of raw excitement, a unique form of joy. She felt its power, and for that instance it was hers alone. ‘Then with all due respect sir, please shut up and shift your arse out of my way,’ she said quietly. ‘Come on Sheen,’ she said, moving out of her chair as Irwin, silent and staring, slid out of his place and stood up as she had instructed.

  ‘Come on, where?’ said Sheen. ‘What just happened, Aoife?’ he asked. But she was already heading for the door, hoping he would follow but not really caring if he did or not. She was rolling. At last Irwin’s stunned silence broke, she heard his bellowing voice as she strode away.

  ‘DC McCusker!?’ he shouted. Aoife did not answer. She turned and saw Sheen hurrying after her. Irwin stood with his arms by his side, face crimson. She addressed him.