He turned away before a smile split his face and blew his whole act. “Now, get on w...with it and let me have those blood type names ASAP so I can get the list to the chief.”
Ash did as he was bid, not because he agreed with Davy’s list system, and not because he’d been fooled for one minute by his grumpy face, but because part of him secretly liked being told what to do sometimes, which might, if he’d thought about it, have explained the exceptionally bossy women that he always seemed to date.
****
Templepatrick, County Antrim.
Craig got his first call of the day just as they were entering the picturesquely named Rosetree Close cul-de-sac in Templepatrick, a small town in rural County Antrim whose occupants were mostly well to do, supportive of law and order, and didn’t seem to mind the constant thundering of traffic through their idyll to the Belfast International Airport, which lay six miles on the other side.
He signalled Liam to park while he put the call on speaker, and two minutes later they both knew that the blood on Derek Smyth’s switchblade had had a rare group that conveniently enough could only have belonged to one of two inmates at Mahon during his four year sojourn there.
“Which one was it, Davy?”
The disembodied voice informed them that the vital fluid found on the blade had belonged to an inmate called Art Reagan and it had come from a through and through wound in his right flank that had barely missed his kidney by an inch.
“Did Smyth get any injuries?”
“His spleen. It matches the scar that Doctor Winter found.”
“Good... What was the fight about? Does the file say?”
“There’s only one line here. ‘Sectarian basis.’ Reagan must have been a Catholic.”
“Have been? Is he dead?”
Davy realised the confusion. “No, sorry, I meant have been in the s...sense that Reagan’s no longer in Mahon. He was released last year.”
Craig nodded to himself. “OK, good. Get his details. We may need a word. Anything else for us?”
“Yes. Doctor Marsham called at nine to confirm that the date stickers are acid, I mean LSD, s...so you were right. He was about to do more tests on the poison Smyth took, so he said he’d call you later with the name.”
Liam leaned towards Craig’s phone to interject; it was something that he always did when it was on speaker, irrationally given that the smart-phone possessed a microphone so powerful that on another occasion Craig had picked up the sound of him opening a bag of crisps at the other end.
“Smyth must have been permanently off his face.”
Craig shrugged. “Or else he’d developed such a tolerance that he barely felt more than a buzz. Waving his deputy to sit back he continued. “Anything on the calendar dates, Davy?”
“We’ve indentified one of them, in May.”
Craig’s eyes widened as he realised he’d forgotten to pass on what Royston had told them about the drone drop. He shook his head at his deputy not to mention the omission as Davy carried on.
“It was an attempted drug drop into Mahon via drone, but it was intercepted by a guard. We’re looking into him and the inmates who were waiting for the drop. There’d been earlier drones as well but Ash checked and no-one was caught. I also called the governor’s office about s...security measures generally and I’m waiting for them to get back to me on those.”
Liam feigned admiration. “A drone? Well I never. The cheeky buggers”, prompting a look from his boss that said, “Don’t overact”.
Craig changed the subject hastily. “Davy, I doubt that there will be, but check if there’s any way of tracing the drone operator, please.”
Another one for his list.
“It’s a long shot but w...we’ll try.”
“Thanks. Excellent work. I’ll let you go; you’ve a lot to get on with.”
The detective was about to hang up when he had another thought. “Is anyone else around?”
“S...Sorry, no. Everyone’s out at meetings. Did you want me to pass on a message?”
“No, no. Well... if you could just remind Alice that a D.C.I. White-”
Liam shook his head. “D.C.S. White. Promotion, remember.”
Craig smiled. “D.C.S. White will be coming to meet with us at twelve, so we’ll be back in time for that. If she could lay on coffee and sandwiches for three, please.”
Liam made a face. Much as he was pleased to have been included, drinking coffee, horrible claggy stuff that always left him feeling like a budgie had set up home in his mouth, and eating the canteen’s day-old curled-up sandwiches would definitely necessitate a pit-stop for a decent cuppa and some chips on the way to Mahon later on.
But that was a bargain to be struck later, so as Craig ended his call the D.C.I. clambered out of his car and turned towards the shiny front door that they were about to knock.
“You think the wee bastard’s in?”
Craig rolled his eyes. “You’d have to ask his parents about part of that question, but yes, Tommy’s home. I saw the blinds being separated as you parked.” He swept a hand in front of him. “Fire ahead.”
Liam took the firing ahead order to heart and advanced the cause by hammering his fist on the small residence’s glass and brass front door, expecting to see the scowling, crew-cutted head of Tommy Hill approach them like a bullet and strangely looking forward to the encounter because he hadn’t seen the ex-paramilitary, if that wasn’t an impossibility, for a whole year.
So imagine both detectives’ surprise when, instead of the familiar hedgehog-like haircut that they’d expected to see, the top of a sleek, well-tended head of salt and pepper hair appeared. When the door opened something else surprised them too, a scent that reminded Liam of the incense that his parish priest used to wave around during high days at mass. The fact that not only had the top of Tommy’s hair grown but the rest of it was hitting his shoulders, and he was also growing a goatee that seemed to suffering from a lack of fertilizer or will and wearing clothes that looked like pyjamas but definitely weren’t, made Liam gawp.
Craig didn’t try to hide his shock either, but it was nothing compared to the head-to-toe scan and open-mouthed astonishment with which his deputy greeted their host.
“What the hell happened to you?”
A fulsome “Namaste” and a bow and Tommy turned back down the hall and into his small living room, taking a seat cross-legged on the floor and waving the policemen towards the couch.
“Welcome, brothers. It’s a pleasure to see you.”
Liam’s response was to tear back to the front door to check that they were in the right house, and then stride back into the living room again to glare down at their host.
“Stop taking the Mick, Tommy, and sit on the furniture like a normal person!”
With a serenity that Liam was sure had to be coming from some drug or other their host nodded and rose, moving smoothly across to an armchair.
“The water has just boiled, so please make yourselves tea. I have camomile, ginger, rose hip...”
Craig wasn’t listening, his eyes searching the room for signs that this was a set-up and bemusedly concluding that it wasn’t, and that Tommy had experienced some sort of Damascene moment that had pointed him far eastwards on his quest for enlightenment. He accepted the small blessing gratefully; with Tommy’s terrorist past he could have landed on something a damn sight worse.
As Liam took out his confusion on the kettle Craig asked a question.
“Buddhism?”
Another “Namaste” said that he’d guessed right.
“How long?”
“Seven months. I’m only a little way along the path.”
The optimist in Craig really hoped that the conversion would last, but his far stronger cynical side said that he was more likely to win the office pool on the Grand National next year.
He played along anyway.
“Sorry to disrupt your aura, Tommy, but do you know a Derek Smyth by any chance?”
T
he Loyalist’s equilibrium wavered for a fraction of a second, but Craig was impressed when he righted himself again speedily and nodded, with an exaggerated look of tolerance on his heavily wrinkled face.
“I do.”
“In what capacity?”
The detective was momentarily distracted by his deputy thumping down beside him on the sofa, without a cup of tea in his hand, Liam’s glance of disgust towards the kitchen saying that none of the ones on offer had resembled his usual black tar closely enough to deserve the honour of getting drunk. Craig knew he would hear a tirade on the evils of camomile and ginger on the trip back to town, but for now he signalled Liam to keep quiet while Tommy went through a whole ritual of pressing his palms together vertically and bowing before he answered the question that he’d just asked.
“Derek was in UKUF, when I led that organisation of sin.”
It was a description they couldn’t argue with but that didn’t stop Liam giving a loud snort. A sharp sideways glance from his boss said, “Shut up” as Tommy carried on.
“Derek was a lost soul who had committed many evils in his life when he joined us.”
Liam couldn’t resist. “I bet that was handy. You didn’t have to waste any time breaking him in.”
Tommy nodded mournfully. “I fear that is true, brother.”
It was too much, even for Craig. Here was a man who for years had barely managed a sentence containing normal grammar and consonants, not to mention liberally dotting expletives all the way through, and now he was speaking like a Professor of English?
He gave an exasperated sigh.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Tommy, drop the Henry Higgins act. Or did they give you a new vocabulary when whoever it was brainwashed you?”
For a moment both detectives thought the Loyalist was going to say, “I forgive you”, then with an element of relief and a pinch of guilt for forcing it out of him, they saw the Tommy that they’d known for years snarling his way back to life.
“Ach, give me a fuckin’ break, would ye. I’m doin’ my best.”
Craig’s guilt grew but Liam merely grinned.
“I knew it! I knew you were just acting.”
Craig shook his head and gestured to a photograph that he’d just noticed of Tommy with a little girl, his granddaughter, looking more relaxed and cheerful than he had in years.
“He wasn’t acting, he was trying, Liam, and hopefully he’ll go back to trying just as soon as we leave. But for now, Tommy, I’m sorry, but if you could you just give us the story on Smyth then we’ll be on our way.”
The guru nodded magnanimously, shooting Liam a look that said he pitied his cynicism, then he answered in the working-class Belfast vernacular in which he had been raised.
“Decker Smyth’s a murderin’ bastard an’ nat the brightest. When he worked wi’ us he wuz alays gettin’ caught an’ endin’ up in the nick. He cud hav bin a bloody tour guide for Ulster’s prisons, he wuz in them so much. Last I heered he wuz in Mahon down in Armagh.”
Craig already knew a lot more about Derek Smyth than he was prepared to say; Annette had emailed him on their way there and given him, amongst other information, the man’s paramilitary CV. He’d been particularly taken by Smyth’s version of justice, whereby he’d given transgressors a good kicking and then scarred their forearms with his blade, possibly the very switchblade that they had found.
The more he learned about Smyth the more he was convinced that George Royston’s impression of the Loyalist as placid had to have been because he’d been permanently stoned.
They needed Tommy’s view on the man.
“What did Smyth specialise in, Tommy?”
If specialising wasn’t too elevated a term when referring to crime.
Tommy screwed up his face.
“Decker wuz a drugs bastard an’ I can’t stand that shit.”
He swung around, suddenly sensing something, to find that Liam was staring so intently at his long hair it was as if he was inspecting it for split ends.
“Do ye want the name af my barber, Ghost?” Tommy had given Liam the nickname Ghost years before because of his pallor.
“Mind ye, I can’t see him doing much with that scrub on the tap af yer bonce.”
Liam’s hand flew defensively to his wiry hair, but by the time he’d thought of a retort Tommy had already turned back to Craig.
“I hate drugs, but needs must when ye need the dosh.” He backtracked hastily. “I mean, that’s what the old me wud have said. Anyway, Decker liked beating up the addicts when they owed him money. He wuz a real bastard wi’ them, an’ nat just when he needed tee be. He liked inflicting pain. He’s probably doing it tee sum poor sod at Mahon now.”
Either street communications weren’t as effective as they used to be and Derek Smyth’s death hadn’t hit the airwaves yet, or Tommy really was out of the paramilitary loop. Whatever the reason, Craig was pleasantly surprised that he’d just told them the truth about their dead man.
Liam had recovered from his hairdressing trauma and thought of another question.
“McCrae. Do you ever see him now?”
The reply came through primly pursed lips. “I’m a changed man.”
“Aye, but do you?”
A moment’s holdout ended with Tommy shrugging his shoulders. “I dropped in tee the bookies last week. Just to say hello like.”
Liam gave him a top-to-toe scan. “I bet that was fun.”
This time he was answered by a growl.
“McCrae knows better than tee take the piss.”
They were quite sure that he did. Rory McCrae knew Tommy’s history as well as any of them, and that growl had said that beneath his current veneer of peace and love the psychopathic killer they all knew was still alive and barely restrained. But barely was good enough for Craig so he shook his head to put an end to his deputy’s version of bear baiting and rose to his feet.
“Thanks for that, Tommy. We’ll leave you in peace now.”
Craig nodded his deputy towards the door with, “Come on, Grasshopper”, but neither of them were even slightly surprised when the Zen master trotted down the hall after them and reached out a hand to stop them opening the front door.
“What’s this awl about, then? Why call on me?”
Craig shook his head. “Don’t get involved, Tommy. You left it all behind for your granddaughter’s sake and things should stay that way.”
An eager look appeared on Hill’s weathered face. “But maybe I cud help, like? With enquiries.”
The phrase made all three of them smile; Tommy had helped them with enquiries many times, albeit usually from the wrong side of a cell door, although he had been useful as an informant too.
But Craig sensed a man who, reformed as he was trying to be, missed the rough and tumble of the underworld, and he’d just made up his mind not to put further temptation in his way when Liam blurted out, “Smyth snuffed it on Sunday”, making Tommy gasp and Craig give a loud tut.
“For God’s sake, Liam!”
“Well, he asked didn’t he?”
It was a feeble defence, and aware of that the words had been uttered in a half-hearted way. But something more had lain behind Liam revealing that Derek Smyth was dead. The D.C.I. was a creature of habit who it was fair to say actively hated change, and Tommy’s sudden conversion to all things serene had unsettled him.
Also, much as he didn’t want the UKUF veteran to return to his murdering ways, Liam wasn’t sure that he believed that someone like Tommy ever deserved the peace that he had apparently found. It offended his sense of justice, which was biblical in some ways. Not in a literal eye-for-an-eye manner; yes, OK, he might fantasise about making some of the scum they arrested pay the ultimate price for their actions, maybe even speculate on whether reintroducing the death penalty would reduce Northern Ireland’s murder rate even though there was no evidence that it had worked anywhere else in the world, facts never spoiling one of Liam’s internal debates. But he could never have flipped t
he switch himself, or seriously wanted the reality in his world; on the other hand... it really didn’t sit well with him when people who’d killed others and left their families mourning forever were allowed to make a fresh start in life. If the families of the people they’d killed had to suffer forever, then forever was how long the killers should stay in jail in his book.
For that reason, although he had voted for the Good Friday Agreement, he hadn’t agreed with the bit about early prisoner release, a scheme from which Tommy, amongst other sectarian murderers, had benefited. And he didn’t agree with any thought of halting the prosecution of state forces now; civilian or uniformed, in his mind anyone who murdered should be hounded for it to their graves, and then when they died they should suffer the agonies of the damned.
But for today he would just have to make do with disturbing Tommy’s newly tranquil attitude to life, so when he spoke again it was with gusto.
“Yeh, someone did Smyth in. They found him in his cell looking like this.”
He threw his head back and put his hands round his throat, mimicking someone gasping for air, then he emitted a series of strangled cries and as a flourish added a loud death rattle at the end. Craig palmed his face despairingly, but there was no point telling Liam off again and he knew it; Tommy had asked why they were there and the D.C.I. was on a roll.
The piece of theatrics had the desired effect on the ageing Loyalist, and an even louder gasp followed, with a follow-on series of expletives and threats that left them in no doubt of what Tommy thought about the events.
On his third, “I’ll kill the fuckers!” Craig interrupted with, “Hang on a minute.”
Tommy swung his whole body around to face him, the tightening of his fists and teeth-bearing snarl making Liam smile. You could take the man out of the gang, but...
“WAT?”
Craig’s narrowing gaze gave him his answer, carrying a warning about what would happen if Tommy followed through his snarl with a swing, and a promise that he was well able to land a blow himself.
It made the paramilitary take a step back down the narrow hall and repeat his question in a marginally less hostile tone, caveating his next, “Wat” with “do ye want?”
Crossing The Line Page 19