Cold in the Soul

by Derek Fee

  ‘Don’t be so bloody sarcastic. You know what I mean. I was reading an article the other day about how the Venetians are more than a little annoyed about the influx of tourists in the summer.’

  ‘Then we should be thankful that the summer here only lasts a few weeks.’

  ‘The tourists don’t come here for the sun, unless they can’t read weather reports. They come here for the craic and for characters like you and me.’

  Wilson had signalled for a pint of Guinness on the way through the bar and it arrived. ‘Still on the antibiotics?’

  McDevitt nodded. ‘Three more days. I can feel the throat getting better already.’

  ‘But you must finish the course to get the full benefit.’

  McDevitt scowled. ‘I didn’t think a week could last so long.’

  A week was nothing, Wilson thought, thinking about his lessons in patience in the hospital and rehabilitation.

  ‘Hard day?’ McDevitt asked.

  Wilson drained half his pint as an answer.

  ‘No sign of the good lady?’

  ‘Away to Coleraine to give a lecture.’

  ‘She still pining for the shores of the Pacific?’

  ‘Aye, like yourself.’

  ‘My agent is asking about a follow-up book. Have you got anything for me?’

  Wilson shook his head. ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘I was thinking of a plot myself. It’s about a police officer who someone is trying to kill. I haven’t worked out who or why yet, maybe you could help with that?’

  ‘I’m not a creative like yourself. I’m just a poor copper trying to do his job.’ He finished the other half of his pint and called for a refill.

  ‘I’ll never forget that you saved my life and I’ll never do you a bad turn, but word has slipped out from on high that you’re the copper they tried to kill in East Belfast.’ McDevitt held up his hand. ‘Don’t waste your breath denying it. I have it on the best authority. I won’t write about it, but I’m concerned. I take deep objection to someone wanting to kill my best friend.’ McDevitt’s voice was shaking.

  ‘Ah, Jock, I didn’t know you cared.’

  McDevitt took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘It’s no fucking joke.’

  Wilson wasn’t joking. He was touched. He put his hand on Jock’s shoulder.

  ‘I might be able to help,’ McDevitt said.

  ‘I don’t need help. It wasn’t such a big deal. A guy cornered me in the warehouse where Sammy Rice was killed and fired a blast from an AK-47. I was lucky I had my weapon on me and I fired back. He ran and I stayed down. I heard a car leaving and I got up. That was it.’

  ‘So he’s still out there?’

  ‘I presume so.’

  ‘And you’ve still got your weapon handy?’

  ‘They took it off me. It’s standard practice when you fire your gun. The shooting is being investigated by the Police Ombudsman’s Office, that’s standard as well.’

  ‘Do you know who’s behind it?’

  Wilson didn’t answer.

  ‘You have an idea.’

  Wilson nodded.

  ‘And you won’t tell me.’

  ‘No.’ Wilson sipped his drink. ‘Changing the subject, we’re looking into the disappearance of a man called Roger Whyte, ever run across him?’

  McDevitt thought for a moment before shaking his head. ‘The name means nothing to me.’

  ‘He lives in Elmwood Mews. We’ll do a door-to-door in the area and put a flyer in every letter-box. But it wouldn’t hurt to have a piece in the Chronicle.’

  ‘Lots of people go missing. What’s the wrinkle with this guy?’

  ‘He has a very healthy bank balance and maybe more assets we haven’t discovered yet.’

  ‘Now that is interesting.’

  ‘I don’t know if his disappearance is linked to his wealth, but it’s as good a place as any to start.’

  ‘What do they say, there are three reasons to kill someone: sex, money or revenge. Have you ruled out the other two?’

  ‘I’ll move on to them when I’ve checked the money angle out. What about a piece in the paper? Whyte disappeared around the twelfth of July. We’re looking for anyone who had contact with him around that date.’

  ‘You know that Belfast goes crazy on the days leading up to the twelfth and for several days after. Half the Protestant population probably don’t even know what planet they were on over that period.’

  ‘We know the problem. Still, someone might remember meeting him.’

  McDevitt stroked his chin. ‘Things are quiet at the moment. I suppose I might be able to work up an angle.’

  ‘Good man. I hear they have a great green tea here, I don’t suppose you’d fancy a cup?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  What the hell had she been thinking of when she had returned to Belfast? Moira had studied psychology as part of her degree course so she understood the concept of ‘buyer’s remorse’. Summer would soon draw to a close. The days would get shorter and it would be dark when she got up in the morning and dark when she returned to her garret in the evening. In the meantime, she would spend her time praying for some drone-nerd to offer a piece of film showing what had happened at Helen’s Bay the day someone used a brand-new BMW as a funeral pyre. Maybe she had been a little rash in turning down Frank Shea’s offer. Life in the US was getting complicated and Belfast had represented an uncomplicated alternative, or at least it seemed that way. But uncomplicated also meant boring and Moira didn’t do boring so well.

  She had finished what passed for her dinner and was contemplating an evening in front of the box when her eyes fell on the file on the investigation into Jackie Carlisle’s death. Putting Helen McCann in jail wouldn’t be easy, but it would be fun, and dangerous, maybe even very dangerous. She pulled out her laptop and surfed. There were over two thousand pages with mentions of Helen McCann and almost as many with mentions of her daughter Kate. Moira didn’t yet have a printer and made a mental note to get one. She went to the Wikipedia site and looked at Helen’s profile. There were details of her early life, her scholastic achievements, her marriage to a famous older man, her resumé as a businesswoman and a list of her board appointments. It was anodyne. The focus was on Helen McCann the public person and there was nothing about who Helen McCann actually was. She must have had some drive and energy to go from humble beginnings to being the top of her class at Queen’s University.

  If they were going to bring the investigation to a conclusion, they’d have to adopt a different approach. Peter Davidson had followed the trail of evidence regarding Carlisle’s death. She would centre her research on Helen McCann. She would start by reading each of the two thousand online entries mentioning McCann. That should give her some insight into McCann’s psychology. McCann couldn’t be brought down by a frontal attack. Wilson was right about that. Bringing her in to help with inquiries, would only put her on high alert. The best way to bring her down would be to get inside the protective ring she’s built around her. And that would mean getting to know her as well as she knew herself. Moira opened the website of a computer supply company and ordered a cheap laser printer and two boxes of copy paper. It was time to get to work.

  He had connected his phone to the television and was playing the videos he’d made. His parents’ living room filled the screen and the camera moved to the still figure of Roger Whyte lying on his mother’s treasured Persian carpet. Whyte was catatonic, his eyes bulged and his face was in a rictus of fear. The older man was his first and he had made a mistake on the quantity of the drug he had used. He paused the picture and moved closer to the screen, reliving the excitement he had felt. Whyte looked scared to death. He restarted the video and his own face leaped onto the screen. He looked exultant. He had discovered his reason for living.

  He felt no emotion for Whyte. It was always like that. He’d wondered why people had cried at the deaths of his grandparents. It was on occasions of either great sadness or great joy that he r
ealised how different he was. He stared again at Whyte’s startled face. The worms will have been feasting on that face. Whyte had promised him untold wealth if he would only let him live. But it wasn’t about money. It was about satisfying his need. Once he had revealed himself, there was no way he could let Whyte go.

  The video continued. He entered the picture frame again, pulled down Whyte’s trousers and his Y-fronts, revealing his white, flabby posterior. Then he opened his own fly and displayed his erect penis. He climbed on Whyte and raped him. He could feel his penis growing now as he watched himself invading the older man. He smiled as he watched the performance. He could easily have had sex with Whyte. That had been Whyte’s intention when they had had gone off together. But that hadn’t been his intention. He watched until the recording finished and then stopped the picture at the point where he stood on the screen standing over Whyte’s body.

  There was a part of him that would like to show Dr Rose his home movies. He wondered what she would think of them. The recording would say so much more about him than an hour of listening to his ramblings. He was sure that she had already worked out he was homosexual, especially since he didn’t hide it from her. He had attempted to come out at sixteen, but his parents’ Christian faith wouldn’t allow them to accept that their son was cursed and destined for hell. Then they made the gross mistake of sending him to a gay conversion facility in the US to be ‘cured’. The stupid fools thought he had some kind of disease. They believed that hours of indoctrination accompanied by a bit of scourging and some ice-cold water baths would give them back their blue-eyed boy. The effect had been the opposite. His counsellor had been ‘cured’ but still managed to rape him. The experience allowed him to channel the anger and hate he felt, not for himself but for others with the same sexual orientation. It was the first step on the path to the man he has become. He realised that the sooner he was ‘cured’, the sooner he would be released from the grip of the pseudo-psychologists and their crazy theories.

  Back in Belfast, he often saw his mother staring at him. He responded with a smile, but he knew she didn’t totally believe in his conversion. His parents didn’t realise that what made them uneasy about him had nothing to do with his sexual orientation and everything to do with the anger and hate he felt for everyone around him. He sat staring at the final still image of his first foray into murder and a thrill ran through him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Wilson pounded the concrete on the Laganside path that was the habitual route for his morning run. He had remained a little too long in McDevitt’s company the previous evening and had eaten only a snack before going to bed. Reid hadn’t shown up by the time he’d got home and he assumed that the after-lecture festivities were the reason for her delay. This morning’s run had the dual purpose of clearing his head and allowing him to reflect on the happenings of the past few days. His willingness to play his part in the story the brains at HQ had cobbled together meant he was still potentially in danger. They also hadn’t bargained on the dogged Senior Investigating Officer Matthews. Within the force, an admonishment by the Police Ombudsman’s Office was unpleasant, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Serving officers were more worried when an investigation into their activities was being undertaken by Professional Services. He was learning the hard way that the Ombudsman’s Office was not to be dismissed lightly and that he had been naive in thinking that the officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Force might not be as serious as those of the PSNI. Matthews was teaching him a lesson about underestimating the opposition that he should have learned years ago on the rugby field. He was also loath to admit that the attempt on his life had shaken him. It is a truism that police officers do a dangerous job. Putting one’s life at risk is very easy in theory but quite a different story when facing a hail of bullets from an AK-47. He had been offered counselling and had turned it down. Perhaps he’d been a little hasty. He decided to try to put the issue from his mind.

  Wilson’s proposed incursion into an investigation that up to now had been led by Sergeant Browne, had nothing to do with competence and a lot to do with his desire to have a morning free of Matthews. He had no idea why Whyte had disappeared, but he believed that he had come to no good. He was also sure that the motive for the disappearance was money. How the disappearance and the money were connected would be the major line of inquiry. He passed the Titanic Centre on his left and continued running. He was on autopilot as far as the run was concerned and his mind was clearing.

  It was also time to decide on the future of the Carlisle investigation. He knew Moira was eager to take it over, and she would be the perfect choice to further the investigation. However, the attempt on his life had shown how dangerous it is to poke a bear and he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if a decision of his led to her death. He turned and headed for home. The murder cases of Grant and Malone were still open, Sammy Rice’s death was also a mystery and Jackie Carlisle had also been murdered. A lightbulb went off in his head. What if all these deaths are connected? He’d tell Moira that he was giving her the Carlisle investigation when he arrived back from Bangor.

  He found the Sunny Days Care Home quite easily. It was located on a rise just off Seacliff Road, in a prime position with a view over Belfast Lough. He parked in front of the large two-storey red-bricked building, guessing that in former times it might have been a small hotel catering to the summer holiday crowd from Belfast. That would have been in the days when the price of a two-week holiday in Spain was beyond the pocket of most working-class families. Times had changed and so had the demographic. Seaside towns like Bangor now mostly catered for geriatrics. A businessperson would justify the change of use by citing the laws of supply and demand.

  The reception area had maintained an old-world atmosphere reminiscent of a 1950s hotel, which probably suited most of the residents. A middle-aged woman stood behind a polished oak mid-level desk.

  ‘Good morning,’ Wilson said. He looked for a name-tag on the woman’s ample chest; there was none. Sunny Days had bought into the full 1950s vibe.

  The woman looked him up and down before responding. ‘Good morning, how can I help you? If you’re looking for a place for an aged relative, I’m afraid we have no vacancies.’

  Wilson took out his warrant card. ‘Detective Superintendent Ian Wilson, I called yesterday. I want to have a word with a resident, Mrs Norma Whyte.’

  ‘And the director approved?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  The receptionist called over a young woman dressed in a white orderly jacket. ‘Miriam take this police officer to see Mrs Whyte.’

  Miriam smiled at Wilson. ‘Follow me, please.’

  Wilson fell into step and they walked to a door at the left of reception. Miriam punched in a code on a keypad and a buzzing noise indicated the door was ready for opening. Wilson pushed it and held it back to permit her to enter. They walked along a corridor with doors on either side, most of them ajar.

  ‘We have a few wanderers so the door to reception is always locked,’ Miriam said.

  As if to prove a point, an old lady approached them. She stood in front of Wilson. ‘Have you come to take me home?’

  Wilson was about to answer in the negative when Miriam interrupted. ‘Yes, Mrs Cassidy, this is the driver of the car your son sent. But he has to have a cup of tea first. When he’s finished, we’ll come and find you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The old lady continued along the corridor.

  ‘Alzheimer’s,’ Miriam said. ‘You see what I mean about the front door. Mrs Whyte is on the ground floor. She’s not one of our wanderers.’ They continued along to the end of the corridor and she knocked on the final door on the left.

  ‘Come in,’ the voice was faint but distinct.

  Miriam opened the door. ‘A visitor for you, Norma.’ She held the door open to permit Wilson to enter.

  Norma Whyte sat in a wheelchair staring through a large window. She turned the wheelchair around when Wilson entered. T
he room was large and more like a suite, with a sitting area and a coffee table as well as a bedroom.

  This is the way it ends, he thought. The frail woman was dressed in a woollen cardigan and plaid skirt. Her hair was totally white and well-coiffed, but the face beneath was thin and pallid. The dark circles under her eyes indicated that all was not well with Norma Whyte. He took out his warrant card and introduced himself.

  ‘Take a seat, superintendent.’ Her tone was soft and sibilant. ‘I’ve been expecting someone from the constabulary to visit me. Has something happened to Roger?’

  Wilson hadn’t expected the direct approach. ‘I’m afraid your son hasn’t been seen since the twelfth of July and his disappearance is now the subject of a PSNI inquiry. Why were you expecting someone from the police?’

  ‘Because my son visits me every Sunday at precisely midday. Not at five minutes to twelve, nor five minutes past twelve. He lives by a regular schedule. When he didn’t visit a few weeks ago, I knew something was wrong.’

  ‘So, you have no idea where your son is?’

  ‘No idea in the wide world.’

  ‘You don’t appear unduly worried.’

  ‘How old are you, superintendent?’

  ‘Forty-one.’

  ‘I’m seventy-eight and I’m sitting in this wheelchair because of a stroke five years ago that left me paralysed on the left side. If Roger is missing, I can do nothing about it. That’s your job.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind if I get personal.’

  ‘I expect it.’

  ‘This must be one of the best rooms here. Who pays for it?’

  ‘My son pays for it.’

  ‘And if we can’t locate him?’

  ‘Roger has always been rather clever, even as a child. He told me that he has made provision to have my stay here paid until I leave.’

  ‘It must cost a lot.’

  ‘Roger is not short of money.’

  Wilson was thinking of the four hundred and twenty thousand in Whyte’s bank account. A long-term stay in Sunny Days would put quite a dent in that sum. ‘We’ve seen his bank account, he has something over four hundred thousand pounds in it.’