by John Steele
‘Harold, where is he?’ he said. ‘We’ve been driving around for half an hour now.’
Harold’s thick lenses were reflecting the sodium streetlight glow, twin orange windows in the dark of the back seat. ‘I swear he’s always about here,’ he said. ‘He thinks because it’s dark he can get away with walking the dog.’
Marty finally put the gun on the floor of the car, then took his seat belt off and turned to face the kid, hands balled into fists. Jackie had little time for Marty Rafferty. He’d have chewed him out for fiddling with the handgun if the guy’s da wasn’t one of the top men in the organisation in their patch. In the rear view mirror, he saw Harold shrink into his seat ready for the violence to come. Jackie slammed on the brakes as they hit the end of Cherryville Street. Harold was already so braced for his beating that he barely moved as the car jolted to a halt, but Marty was yanked backwards, causing his head to crack off the windscreen.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ he screeched. Jackie turned to face Marty. ‘You arsehole! You want to join that wee shite with a couple of bullets in your fuckin’ legs the night?’
Marty Rafferty was actually two years younger than Jackie Shaw who, in his early twenties, was himself a babe in arms in the Ravenhill UDA. Nevertheless, he thought himself a higher rank.
‘Marty mate, just braked a wee bit heavy. I was looking out for the kid and the dog. Didn’t notice we were near on My Lady’s Road.’
‘Aye, and you’ll not notice when I come up behind you and put a fuckin’ round in your head.’
Jackie, nice and calm: ‘How’re you going to get up so close after I break your fuckin’ legs? And you’ll be a bit noisy breathing through a tube.’
Harold was wide-eyed in the glow of the streetlight outside. Jackie could see the kid out of the corner of his eye, looking small and lost. He caught a flicker of indecision behind the glasses.
Marty squared his shoulders but hesitated as Jackie followed Harold’s gaze directly between the two of them and across My Lady’s Road to the entrance of Canada Street opposite. There walked a man in a pair of blue jeans and a parka, with a small Jack Russell terrier on a short lead. There was no one else around.
Marty followed his line of sight and clocked the figure.
Jackie gunned the car, accelerated hard across the road and mounted the kerb in front of man and dog.
He had to admit, Marty did it right. He grabbed the pistol and was out, gun in clear view but held low and no raised voice, just a nod to indicate that dog and owner should get in the car. Shanty reacted well too. He didn’t shout or run or threaten. He picked up his dog and frowned, then opened the rear door of the car on the left. He saw Harold but again just frowned and sat next to him in silence. Jackie reversed off the kerb, buzzing on adrenaline, and turned back towards the Ravenhill Road and the Lagan Lodge Bar.
#
The day shift of drinkers – old men, the unemployed, wasters, alcoholics – had given way to the night shift – the same mix, with men clocked off work and the odd paramilitary thrown in. There were women in the bar too, many matching their male counterparts pint for pint, measure for measure. The atmosphere was one of hard, concentrated drinking with the occasional bray or cackle of laughter scything through the thick fug of fag smoke. In the corner, sitting in a snug with two hulking bruisers, sat a rangy, dishevelled figure with a pint glass in his hand. His hair was lank and tousled, and his wiry frame was draped across the bench like a scarecrow at rest. Small, hard eyes like polished raisins shone from a blunt caricature of a face. Rab Simpson.
Rab was in conference with two men who were twice his size and looked significantly older, sporting thick moustaches and three-day stubble. Their body language telegraphed respect for the skinny man in the dirty Ramones T-shirt.
Rab Simpson was twenty-six and had risen fast through the ranks of the UDA. He was in a constant quest for a suntan in the harsh and dank climate of the Northern Irish winter, but his skin hadn’t taken to the tanning beds well. He had a sickly, jaundiced pallor which, along with his prominent overbite, had given him the nickname Homer among some of the rank and file.
Never to his face though.
Simpson’s other nickname was ‘Sick Bag’: they heard a peeler threw up in his evidence bag upon finding some of Rab’s handiwork washed up on the shore of the Lagan.
Jackie and Marty, with Harold and Shanty in front, pushed their way through the other patrons. Shanty clutched his dog in his arms. When they reached the snug, the big men stood up.
‘Harold,’ said Rab, ‘thank you for your co-operation in finding young Shanty here. What are you having?’
Harold stared at Rab with his mouth slack. Rab sat, his eyes lidded and narrow, his top lip fat and flared by the great tombstone teeth beneath. Jackie said, ‘Our Harold’ll have a pint. Harp.’
And probably throw it up again as soon as he has it down him, he thought.
Rab nodded and turned his gaze on Shanty. The teenager maintained his sullen expression but managed to answer that vodka would do.
‘Get him two,’ said Rab. The big men made for the bar.
Jackie lit up a Benson & Hedges, offering one to the boys, who looked for all the world as though they were in the principal’s office. Shanty, smooth-skinned, with clear blue eyes and choirboy looks, took one; Harold, head bowed with a shining trickle of snot tying his pug nose to his thin lips, declined. Jackie lit Shanty to save him having to let go of his beloved dog.
Rab picked up his pint, took a swig, and said, ‘You know why you’re here, Shanty?’
A nod.
‘Why don’t you remind me?’
Shanty related the story. The break-up, the revenge, hiding out just a mile away.
‘And this wee girl. Who’s her uncle?’ said Rab.
Silence. Shanty tilted his head to avoid dropping ash on his dog.
‘If you don’t answer me,’ said Rab, quiet, ‘I’ll take you out the back and put the rounds in you myself. And not in your knees. But before I do, I’ll finish that mangy wee rat you’re holding.’
Shanty gripped the Jack Russell tighter. For its part, the dog studied a beer spill on the table in front of them.
‘Billy Tyrie.’ It was almost a whisper.
Rab leaned forward, still the only one of them seated.
‘That’s right, Shanty. I have to give you credit, son, when you fuck up, you fuck up big-time. Now, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to have your drinks so you get a wee bit of a glow on, make things a wee bit easier on you. We’re not uncivilised here. You’ll have your pint as well,’ a sneer at Harold, ‘then Jackie and Marty are going to take you, Shanty, out the side of the bar, down to the end of the alley and shoot you in the back of the knees.’
Jackie noticed Rab’s face flush when he passed sentence. His fingertips had gone white as his grip on his pint glass tightened, but his voice remained flat and calm.
‘Your mate here is going to watch, to see the result of his handiwork in grassing you up. Then he’s going to come back into the bar and phone an ambulance.’
Jackie took the cigarette out of Shanty’s mouth. It had almost burned to the filter.
‘And let this be a warning to you. If youse ever do anything like this again, it won’t be the back of the knees next time. We will not stand for anti-social activity in this community.’
The two thugs were returning with the drinks. Jackie and Marty were abstaining as Jackie was lookout and Marty needed a steady hand for the actual kneecapping. He looked like he could use a drink, though.
‘Oh, and one last thing,’ said Rab, now smiling. His lips were taut and stretched over the aggressive jut of his buck teeth. ‘I’ll take the dog. You’ll hardly be walking him for a month or two so I’ll hold onto him. For safekeeping, like.’
#
By the time they slipped out through the reinforced steel door at the side of the bar, it had stopped raining. Shanty’s vodkas hadn’t made much impact. He had begun to shake and the imp
assive front he’d put up in the bar had shattered as soon as his dog became part of the equation. He’d started to rail against Rab, and Jackie had hit him a couple of quick slaps, less to keep him in line than to prevent Rab from taking the kid apart there and then. Rab had pulled a knife and nicked Shanty’s ear as a warning and memento. Now Ally was sitting at Rab’s feet in the snug being fed snacks by the two goons and Shanty was hugging himself in the damp, cold trench of the alley. There was a stink of stale beer and piss, although the latter could have been coming from Harold.
‘It was a fucking accident, you know,’ said Shanty. ‘I broke into her house, aye. I went to her bedroom, aye. Couldn’t get her out of my head, like.’ The drink had loosened his tongue. ‘I love her, y’see. I took Ally with me. I take Ally everywhere.’
‘You took your dog house-breaking?’ said Marty.
‘Aye. He was just nervous, so he jumped on her bed and did his business. It wasn’t his fault. Then I panicked and did a runner. I didn’t want to tell Simpson in case he did Ally in. Youse won’t tell him, will youse?’
Jackie glanced at his watch. ‘Take your time, Marty. Better to do it right than rush the job.’
Marty scowled and gave Shanty a shove towards the low, rough-textured concrete wall of the alley, with broken glass and barbed wire on top. Jackie made for the entrance of the narrow passage that opened onto the Ravenhill Road, about ten yards away. He lit up another cigarette and shooed Harold further towards Marty and Shanty. He checked his watch – 8.04 p.m. – and let out a racking cough.
Marty was fiddling with the automatic while Shanty lowered himself flat on his belly on the cold concrete. The night was settling into dampness; the road was deserted. Jackie could smell the drifting smoke of coal fires coming from the terraced streets a couple of hundred yards away. He strained, but couldn’t make out the burned-out shell of East End Video further up towards the park.
What he could make out was a squat grey shape gliding by the shops about 150 yards away. It had two pinpricks of light on the front and was joined by a second, bulky grey shadow approaching the Ravenhill Road from the left. He turned to see Shanty lying flat, Harold tight to the side of the alley, and Marty gripping the Walther with both hands, taking deliberate aim at Shanty’s left leg.
‘Peelers!’
Marty looked up and cocked his head back sharply: ‘What?’
‘Peelers!’ said Jackie, somewhere between a hoarse whisper and a shout.
The two armoured police Land Rovers were within fifty yards of the bar now, passing the gospel hall by Shamrock Street. He sprinted up the alley and made for the heavy steel door at the side of the bar. As he grabbed for it he hissed at Marty, who had now lowered the Walther PK and stood staring at him.
‘It’s the fucking peelers! Dump the gun and get in the fucking bar.’
As he ducked in the door he saw the first Land Rover pull up at the end of the alley and the dark, hulking phantom of a policeman in body armour clamber out, carrying a Heckler & Koch submachine gun.
CHAPTER 4
Thursday
As Jackie drives down from the Castlereagh Hills into the city on a crisp October morning, he can see the patchwork of terraced streets, the maze of the Cregagh Estate and the stalking giants of the gantry cranes in the shipyard, Samson and Goliath.
Jackie is overtaken by a PSNI Police Land Rover and is surprised by how garish the blue and amber check strip looks, rather than the pugnacious battleship grey of the old RUC models. He is conscious that he is unarmed.
By the time he’s nearing Bendigo Street and his father’s house, he realises the city, or life in it, has moved on. Factories and businesses have gone, to be replaced by startling new steel and glass constructions or left as hollow carcasses by the roadside. Home-grown shops and supermarkets have been consumed by national or international chains. There are pockets of resistance, but the chaotic vibrancy of the local shopping street is almost gone. And the flags are everywhere. It is territorial marking at its most conspicuous. The thought that it could be read as a stark warning to him, that he has no place here any more, isn’t lost on him.
Approaching the traffic lights at the bottom of the Ormeau Park, Jackie sees a glass-fronted apartment building wedged between two of the usual terraced houses. Its modernity is stark, like a bright silver cap in a row of yellowed teeth. The cavity that had once been the ruined East End Video building reborn. Just around the corner he spies a small garden of remembrance ringed with freshly painted railings. A small plaque is positioned on the gable wall to memorialise the nine innocent souls who died on that day twenty years ago. The bombers have no such tribute.
A few more yards down the road and he passes another gable wall. In the past it was adorned by a roughly painted mural of two masked gunmen and the crest of the UVF. The other lads had hated that mural: there were no UDA depictions on the road while the local rivals were represented, but Billy had just laughed.
‘Who needs to advertise?’ he’d said, which was true enough. Billy Tyrie wasn’t a brigadier by that stage but he was well on the way and everyone knew he ran the Ravenhill, Woodstock, Cregagh and Castlereagh areas. He said, ‘The people know we’re here; the peelers know we’re here and, most important, the Fenians know we’re here.’
And I hope to God you don’t know I’m here now, thinks Jackie.
He hadn’t intended stopping, just to drive through the old area and take in Bendigo Street from behind the wheel of the Toyota. But it’s been so long and the road is busy with morning traffic and assorted pedestrians: it should be safe. So he parks in a side street and strolls back to the memorial, where he stops for a moment to take it in. He catches an older man looking at him. The man, who wears the ravages of time, is walking a scrawny-looking terrier; he greets Jackie as he goes past. Jackie smiles and returns the pleasantry, and feels a little more at home. He had forgotten the simple pleasure of passing the time of day with a complete stranger. He saw the same people every day on the walk to work in England, back when he lived in a city, and never managed to achieve eye contact with them. It is one of Northern Ireland’s many contradictions that, while the two communities continue to live in distrust and resentment, people will happily greet and talk to a stranger on the street. He turns and hurries past a convenience store, then dodges traffic to cross over the road and avoid being seen through the front window of the Parkside Bar. Just in case.
He passes a tidy little greengrocer where some locals are already sniffing various fruit and vegetables.
He passes the post office and hears a couple of men chatting in what he takes to be Polish, certainly an Eastern European language.
He passes Mr Ali’s mini-supermarket. He doesn’t see Mr Ali himself through the window but clocks a large Pakistani-looking guy behind the counter and supposes he’s the son. The last time Jackie saw him, he was a scrawny teenager in the local flute band.
A barrage of voices batter his ears. Customers walking out of the mini-supermarket behind him. His hands go to his pockets but he doesn’t know what for: maybe it’s a reflex from the days when he might be carrying a weapon. It’s strange for him, being surrounded by the staccato song of Belfast accents after a time away from the city. He’s disorientated.
‘… sure, Isabelle … then he says … dole … aye, says you … catch yourself on …’
Female chatter with a couple of deeper male voices, indistinct, bringing up the rear.
‘… you’ll be so lucky … Sammy Courtney’s wife … I had to laugh …’
As Jackie approaches the corner of Bendigo Street itself the male voices begin hacking through the older women’s babble.
‘… Mabel, never again … ’til next week … mine paremale …’
He feels the back of his neck tingle, as though one of the women behind had reached out and touched him, and fights the urge to lash out. The female voices fade to his right as the women cross the Ravenhill Road. The Eastern European chatter follows as he turns down Bendigo Street,
meaningless blather to him.
‘… ta võib sattuda … sul on nuga? … kuradi katkestas teda, kui sa pead …’
After ten yards he stops, clenches his fists, closes his eyes for a moment. Jesus, he thinks, no rest for the wicked. When he turns around they stand, unmoving but with clear intent. A morning runner skirts them with a trace of annoyance.
One says in English, ‘You come with us. You don’t come with us, you come later. We know the car, the registration. If you come later, it is not daytime. It is harder for you.’
Jackie can see there’s no malice, it’s just a simple statement of fact. Nevertheless, they’re big men and carry their bulk with confidence. They look like they have no issue with using violence if necessary. But the pavement between the terraced houses and parked cars is narrow – they’d have to come at him one at a time. And the main road is in view. It’s morning, for Christ’s sake, he thinks.
‘Also, we know your sister, her address. You come later, it is harder for her too.’
Jackie’s stomach lurches as though it was back on yesterday’s flight, buffeted by turbulence. His legs feel hollow. It took less than twenty-four hours for them to find him. Using these guys rather than home-grown talent is smart. He thinks Billy must be behind this. Fucking Billy. He nods and tries to loosen up a little, raises his palms and they accompany him back to the car. It’s only when he pulls back out into traffic that the one in the passenger seat produces the flick-knife and he hears the blade snap open.
#
His passengers direct him to follow the Ravenhill Road to its end then drive across the Albert Bridge Road to the nationalist Short Strand. He’s amazed to find the Short Strand is nothing more than a strip of asphalt now, with a couple of new apartments facing onto the river. The sense of menace the place engendered in the past, when it was a nest of PIRA activity, is gone. Following directions, he cuts through the area and finds a vacant lot where Mountpottinger Police Station once stood. He remembers the brick and concrete monstrosity topped by a blast wall which was hammered by terrorist rocket and gun attacks throughout the Troubles.
