Crossing The Line

by Catriona King

  It was a retreat and they all knew it but there was no need to point it out and make him lose face, so Craig made his point quietly and with a tone of curiosity that implied Tommy might still have something to teach them both.

  “I thought that you hated Derek Smyth? You said he was a bastard. So why are you so annoyed that he’s been killed?”

  Tommy seemed confused by the question so Liam went to answer for him, but a sharp glance from Craig said, “Shut up.” It also said that they would be having words about him lighting the Loyalist’s blue touch paper as soon as they returned to the car.

  When Tommy’s confusion cleared he answered Craig’s question in a tone that said it had been stupid but he would deign to respond anyway.

  “Decker Smyth wuz ar bastard an’ we’re the only ones allowed tee kill him, nat sum bugger in jail.” His gaze narrowed. “Who dun it?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  “Does McCrae know? That stupid prick shud’ve taken better care of his men.”

  Craig shook his head. “We haven’t told him, but I’m sure the grapevine has by now. It happened late Saturday or early Sunday.”

  Tommy advanced down the hall again. “Ye’re headin’ tee see McCrae now?”

  Before either detective could answer it was made clear that they wouldn’t be going alone. The guru was yanking on a pair of heavy boots and reaching for his outdoor coat.

  While Liam smirked at the guaranteed entertainment when the two old comrades met Craig gave a heavy sigh.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any point in me telling you that you’re not coming is there?”

  Tommy reached past him and grabbed the handle of the front door.

  “Nope. If ye dunt drive me I’ll get there an me own.”

  Craig’s next sigh conceded defeat and saw Tommy climbing into the back of Liam’s almost new car after a brusque instruction to, “Wipe your feet” and ten minutes later they were on the motorway back into town.

  It seemed that Liam’s very well deserved bollocking would have to be postponed.

  ****

  Belfast City Centre. 11. 30 a.m.

  An hour spent trawling the streets of Belfast in search of sex-workers to interview had yielded so few that Aidan had been forced to concede that Emrys Lomax might have been right; things had moved indoors in the years since he’d left Vice. He admitted as much to his two companions as they were taking a break in a café that he’d used often in the past but had also changed beyond recognition. Once a greasy spoon with a menu limited to two slices of any sort of bread, including soda, wrapped around two sausages for three quid, three-fifty if you added an egg or chips, it was now a chi-chi little bistro with table cloths and an awning, that offered a host of different types of coffee and a hipster brunch. Aidan, who since he’d given up smoking had been known as ‘My body is a temple’ Hughes had ordered a granola crunch salad and was munching loudly on it as they discussed their wasted time.

  As Andy watched the grass and grain mash-up disappearing into his fellow D.C.I.’s, now that he noticed it, rather over-sized mouth, he decided to raise a point.

  “Of course, it could just be quiet because it’s daytime. Girls and punters normally appear at night, don’t they?”

  It stopped Aidan mid-crunch and they watched as his tanned face tinged with red for not thinking of the point himself, and then as he scrambled around for a reason why the assertion could be wrong.

  “Far more likely to be because of the new law. It only came in after I left Vice.”

  Paying for sex had become illegal in the country three years before after the passing of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill, making the province the only part of the UK where it was.

  “If the men buying sex are being prosecuted now instead of the girls, maybe that’s why things aren’t out in the open as much.”

  Ryan made a sound of disgust. “But they didn’t give a damn when the girls were getting nicked, did they? Selfish buggers.”

  No-one argued with him.

  Aidan carried through his thought.

  “It makes things less risky indoors, so maybe we should try a casino or club next?”

  Andy decided to agree instead of suggesting that they came back that night to prove him wrong, something that he had no desire to do because the weather forecast had predicted snow, and there was a good movie showing at the Queen’s Film Theatre, an independent cinema up at the university.

  But Ryan wasn’t letting go so easily.

  “I think we should try the streets again in an hour. The prostitutes in Strangford used to do good lunchtime trade with businessmen.”

  He was right and both D.C.I.s knew it, but the lure of the casino and warmth was far too strong.

  Aidan shook his head. “No, let’s do a casino around four and see what’s what. Meanwhile, I think we should go and see what this Fliss Monroe has to say about the Lithuanians.”

  Andy checked his watch before agreeing. An hour to Cookstown, half an hour for a chat, and then a couple to suss out the locals, they could be at the casino by four o’clock and back at the ranch in plenty of time for the briefing that Craig had called for six. Decision made, he looked around for a waiter to order a takeaway coffee.

  Annette meanwhile was across town and firing on all cylinders. Her trip to Counterterrorism had backed-up what they already knew about imports and the likely gangs involved, and revealed international connections that she hadn’t been aware their dissident Republicans had, mostly but not exclusively in the Middle-East. But the discussion she’d just had at the Law Department had proved more immediately useful to their case, and she took a seat on a futuristically designed metal bench in the modern building’s reception to quickly write up her notes.

  The young solicitor she’d just met with had been more forthcoming than expected, practically tripping over himself to reveal what he knew. The DoL was involved in three major drug prosecution cases at that moment, one already in court and two others at report stage, one of which involved counterfeit meds. They were also developing a fourth case with Serious and Organised Crime that he’d been reluctant to discuss, but it had an IT dimension. When pushed he’d revealed that drones were involved but wouldn’t be drawn on whether they’d been used for drug delivery or in some other way, implying that he would get in trouble with his boss if he said any more.

  Scribbling done, Annette rested back on the space-age looking bench to think and stared into the middle distance, her eyes fixing on a piece of abstract art on the wall opposite that as she stared at it seemed to swirl like a whirlpool and draw her in. She shifted her gaze before she started to feel seasick and re-ordered her thoughts into: gangs, subsets outside and inside prison; and drugs cases, those that prosecutors were already working on and police investigations underway, but was still left wondering how all the information they were gathering was going to bring them closer to whoever had killed Derek Smyth, and more importantly why he had been killed?

  Smyth had been a creep, yes, but no more of one than many of the people they dealt with, and certainly no more than most members of paramilitary gangs. A UKUF lieutenant, OK, but only one of several; the man had basically been a low-level enforcer and dealer, so hardly Pablo Escobar. People like that usually ended their lives impulsively, in a street or even a prison brawl, so why would anyone take the trouble to assassinate him? What had made Derek Smyth important enough to warrant such attention? And how had such a small dealer taken possession of a two-drug combo so innovative that no-one seemed to have even heard of it before?

  She checked herself mid-thought and took out her phone, calling Aidan and catching him on the way to Cookstown.

  “Sorry to bother you. You sound like you’re on the motorway.”

  “We are. On the way to see your mate Fliss.”

  “OK, good, only don’t call her that when you meet her, remember. She prefers Felicity at work. Right, I’ve a quick question for you. In any of your drug discussions
yesterday did anyone mention the double-drug format found in Smyth’s cell?”

  The D.C.I. thought for a moment and then shook his head, elbowing back a curious Ryan, who was leaning in from the back seat of the car trying to hear.

  “We might have mentioned the possibility, but only generally because we didn’t have all the details then, but no-one we met with volunteered anything on them. The closest was the customs guy, Harding, when he mentioned drugs being used to paint the inside of containers. Andy suggested then that people could easily mould the stuff, but there was nothing mentioned about combining drugs in the way the Guv discussed.”

  “It’s an unusual format. I’ve never even heard of it before, have you?”

  “No. Just the two drugs together in a pack like I said yesterday.”

  “You can’t recall who made those, can you?”

  “Yeh. It was a pharmacist in Bangor who’d decided to branch out. No gang affiliations. He’s in Maghaberry now doing seven years. But maybe someone heard of his product and decided to go one better by combining them in one tab, although that could be anyone in the country so it doesn’t give us a lead.”

  “OK, thanks. Then I’m going to ask Davy to search internationally to see if they’ve been found elsewhere.”

  She ended the call with, “Say hi to Fliss for me” and phoned the analyst, intending to add another task to his already long list. She was put out but not that surprised to discover that Davy had already set up the search himself after the day before’s briefing, and come back with a big fat no. No police force anywhere in the world had reported finding such a double-drug.

  Deflated, Annette decided to treat herself to a slap-up lunch in town, managing to push away her immediate feelings of guilt for not inviting Mary with astounding ease. She needn’t have worried; the D.C. was fully occupied. Having checked the timeline of Derek Smyth’s court-case and found that he had been stabbed in the neck whilst on bail, she was now busy annoying the only people left in the office: the analysts and their part-time PA.

  Well, she was annoying one of the analysts anyway; Davy had tuned out everything but work an hour before and had just lifted his phone to call Craig when she’d walked across. He deferred it just long enough to wave her away.

  “Sorry, Mary, I’m too busy for whatever it is.” Then a thought occurred to him and his next words were tinged with hope. “Unless you fancy giving us a hand with some searches?”

  The D.C. had a degree in computing and had helped them before, and as a strange quirk of her character was that she couldn’t bear not being busy she told him that he was in luck.

  “Great.” He nodded towards his junior, ignoring his warning scowl. “Ash has a list a mile long so he can give you a couple of things.” He indicated the phone. “S...Sorry, but I really need to call the chief.”

  Craig’s phone rang just as they pulled up outside Garvan’s Bookies, and he answered it leaning against the boot of Liam’s Ford.

  “Yes, Davy?”

  As soon as the analyst started speaking Craig realised the call was going to take a while. Confident that his deputy would get just as much out of Rory McCrae as he could, albeit using his own unique technique, he nodded him to take Tommy with him into the shop and prompted Davy to carry on.

  “OK, w...well, there are a few things, chief. First, Mary’s helping us with some searches if that’s OK?”

  “Grand. I take it Annette ditched her after they went down to gangs.”

  “Mmm...”

  The sound said that the constable was close by.

  “Right, go on.”

  “OK, s...so the drone that tried to drop drugs at Mahon in May was intercepted by a guard called Jerome Tomelty. He left to join the Harbour Police in S...September; apparently he’d been waiting for a slot for ages, but he’d been at Mahon for years and he’s totally clean. He passed the drugs straight over to the governor and that’s been confirmed. The prisoners w...waiting for the drugs are a bit puzzling though.”

  “In what way?”

  “W...Well, not to stereotype, but one was a Lithuanian called Filip Pojello, and his pal was a member of a Loyalist gang.”

  The detective frowned; strange bedfellows indeed. Loyalists were almost exclusively Protestant whereas of all the Baltic States Lithuania was the most Catholic; not a common partnership in Northern Ireland, which was exactly what Annette and Mary had thought when Geoff Hamill had mentioned the same thing.

  He needed more information.

  “Do we know which group the Loyalist belonged to?”

  The analyst smiled. He’d anticipated one of Craig’s questions correctly and that always felt good.

  “Yes, and it wasn’t UKUF. It was that gang I mentioned yesterday, the Sons of The Boyne.” He sniggered. “They sound like the Sons of Anarchy without the bikes.”

  Craig frowned. New groupings always worried him and Davy had anticipated that as well.

  “I w...wouldn’t worry about them, chief. They were always tiny and they’re almost extinct now. They formed in nineteen-seventy in a split from a larger group and they only ever had ten members, whose main claim to fame seems to have been during the Ulster Workers’ Strike in seventy-four.”

  The Ulster Workers' Council strike was a general strike that took place in Northern Ireland in nineteen-seventy-four during The Troubles. Called by unionists who were against the Sunningdale Agreement, it succeeded in bringing down the Northern Ireland Assembly and causing black-outs and many other things that affected the population. Although Craig had only been a toddler at the time his father had told him stories of lecturing to his students at Queen’s in rooms lit only by Tilley lamps.

  “But their tattoo was on Derek Smyth, so was Smyth the Loyalist who was waiting for the drone?”

  It didn’t sound quite right to him.

  “No, it was a guy called Sammy Wyatt. He was the son of the Boyne’s founding member, same name, which is probably why he still claims links to them.”

  “What’s he in for?”

  “W...Was in. He got discharged four months ago. He was in for breaking and entering. A lot of it. Because Smyth had the gang’s tatt on him I checked, and it turns out he joined the group when he was a kid but left within a year.” He chuckled. “This was before he ‘found himself’ in UKUF.”

  “Or not. OK, so that tells us Smyth and Wyatt knew each other.”

  He wasn’t sure what else it meant, if anything, or whether it was even worth following up given that the drugs drop had been foiled. Perhaps the most important information was that the line between Catholics and Protestants was definitely blurring inside prison, although the fact Smyth had known Wyatt was interesting, as was the fact Wyatt had been smuggling in drugs.

  “OK. Tell me about the Lithuanian.”

  A series of taps said that Davy was opening a file, meaning that he definitely had something to say on this one. After a few seconds the analyst spoke again.

  “OK. Filip Pojello, thirty-two. Originally from Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, he came over here nine years ago to join his family-”

  Craig interrupted. “When did they arrive?”

  “Two-thousand-and-four. Just after Lithuania became a member of the EU.” He paused, expecting another question. When none came he carried on. “By family I mean his parents. They’re in their sixties and settled near Cookstown.”

  Exactly where Aidan and co were heading.

  “What’s Pojello in for?”

  “The s...same as Wyatt. Burglary mostly, although Pojello has an assault on his file as well. He’s not due out until twenty-twenty.”

  Craig knew his next question was so predictable that Davy was bound to have the answer again.

  “You have his gang affiliations, don’t you?”

  “That’s the thing. Pojello doesn’t have any that I can find, but if you could ask the governor that would be good. I tried, but as soon as I mentioned the possibility of organised gangs in his prison Royston almost swallowed the phone. He com
pletely denied their existence.”

  Did he indeed? It felt like Doctor Royston was protesting too much.

  Just then he noticed the time, and a sudden vision of Liam dangling Rory McCrae’s head over a toilet bowl prompted him to end the call.

  “OK, Davy, that’s great. Keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll be back at twelve.”

  He cut the line hastily and walked as fast as he could into the bookies, where he was waved through to the back, to discover that thankfully Liam wasn’t showing Rory McCrae the inside of a lavatory but watching a floor-show, which consisted of Tommy, all five-foot-six of him, looming over his once and always subordinate and barking, “What the hell do ye think yer playin’ at, lettin’ sumwan knock af our man in the nick?”

  Loathe to disturb what for Tommy was obviously a catharsis after months of chanting to stay calm, Craig beckoned his deputy out to the hallway and spoke in his quietest voice.

  “How did McCrae react when you mentioned that Smyth was dead? Did you get the sense that he already knew?”

  The D.C.I. looked uncertain. “It’s hard to be sure, boss. From the second he saw Tommy, McCrae looked like he was expecting to be shot, so subtle signs went out the window. He practically climbed up the wall to get away from him.”

  Craig frowned. “The second you walked in?”

  “Aye. Why?”

  “Then he thought that Tommy was here to chew him out for something, most likely Smyth’s death. And that means that McCrae almost certainly already knew his man was dead. The question is, did he hear about it on the grapevine or have a hand in it?”

  Liam wasn’t convinced.

  “Maybe he was just frightened of Tommy like in the old days. He was always ripping McCrae apart back then.”

  Craig shook his head. “No. Tommy said he’d dropped in here to say hello recently so they’ve obviously been on civil enough terms. So what could suddenly have made McCrae frightened of him except a belief that Tommy was going to shout about something, and that something has to be Derek Smyth.”