Cause of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  First published 2017

  by Black & White Publishing Ltd

  Nautical House, 104 Commercial Street

  Edinburgh EH6 6NF

  www.blackandwhitepublishing.com

  This electronic edition published in 2017

  ISBN: 978 1 78530 160 5 in EPub format

  ISBN: 978 1 78530 132 2 in paperback format

  Copyright © Peter Ritchie 2017

  The right of Peter Ritchie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eBook compilation by Iolaire, Newtonmore

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  Prologue

  ‘Fuck!’

  When the car hit him, the pain was an explosion – then almost as quickly it drained into the cold, damp ground below, and with it went all sensation. He was just aware that the freezing droplets of rain were making him blink, and that he couldn’t move his head to avoid them. He was sure he was dying, but he felt surprisingly calm. Like most people he’d wondered how his last moments would be, but there was almost an anticlimax in the experience.

  With the pain gone his mind adjusted to the situation. A uniform bent over him and mouthed something, but it was a silent movie, although he could guess what was being said. Christ knows he’d been there often enough himself as a young policeman – a thousand years ago now it seemed. All you could do was tell the poor sod to be calm and that help was on its way. Well, he was calm but didn’t think much could sort his situation. He imagined his own young face on the policeman, and if he could he would have wept. Then he saw Grace trying to get to him. She was crying, her face lacerated with pain, and he realised what she’d become to him. His chest heaved with the effort of staying alive and he said it in no more than a whisper: ‘Jesus Christ, this isn’t how it should end.’

  The young policeman turned to Macallan. ‘He’s saying something but I don’t know what it means.’

  She pushed the boy aside, knelt down and put the palms of her hands against his cheeks, her tears dropping onto his face. He smiled at her and thought that he must look a fucking sight. Somewhere in the distance a two-tone blared out its approach.

  ‘Why are they bothering?’ he murmured, and she looked up and rubbed the back of her hand across those startling green eyes of hers.

  ‘Jesus, will you shut up and live?’

  He smiled just before he slid into unconsciousness.

  1

  The Belfast Incident

  Detective Chief Inspector Grace Macallan cursed the cold. She was in an observation post overlooking the Ormeau Road in Belfast, freezing December rain hitting the pavements like cold shrapnel. High above the streets in a derelict building, she watched the operation against a dissident Republican active service unit – or just plain old terrorists to one half of the good people of Northern Ireland. Years of blood had spilled onto the Ormeau Road during the Troubles, and it had seen all forms of brutality in a war where there were no clean hands, despite what some politicians said.

  The road runs from the historic St George’s Market, not far from Belfast city centre, and the ‘Markets’, as it’s better known, became part of the Troubles’ legend as a stronghold of the old Official Irish Republican Army, until the Provisional IRA and the Irish Nationalist Liberation Army became the big boys on the block. The road runs past the old gasworks and Donegall Pass, another stronghold, but the murals of King Billy and fallen volunteers marked it as loyalist. The Markets and Donegall Pass are no more than a few minutes’ walk from each other but may as well have been in different countries. Of course for the people who lived there, they were.

  The road pushes up over the Ormeau Bridge, another flashpoint for some of the darkest days of the Troubles. Orangemen marched and taunted the other side, barricades had been erected, pubs bombed and, on one of the darkest days, marked now by a small plaque, a couple of Prod gunmen had shot four men and a fifteen-year-old boy in Sean Graham’s bookies. Catholic and Protestant working-class people had died on the Ormeau Road, and to a stranger it would have been impossible to look at the dead and tell what religion they’d followed or ignored in life. It had been used on too many occasions by paramilitary ASUs as a route from the Markets to their operations, and sometimes it had taken them no more than minutes to leave the area, carry out an attack and be safely back by their fires. Belfast is a small city by any standards, and yet a few yards of territory between two communities represented centuries of mistrust.

  Macallan had time to sip some sweet black tea and relax before the high tension hit her when the operation started to move. She looked down at the street again and reflected on how deep the shadows became in Belfast at night. Was it just her imagination? She’d always thought they seemed more threatening in this city, and they’d covered so many tragedies during the Troubles. People were dragged into the shadows and died there, or a dark shape would step out and blast the back of your head off. When you ventured out in this city at night, it was better to stay clear of those dark places.

  It was just early evening now and very few of the natives had been brave enough to face the northerly gale that was whipping sleet into the faces of those who had ventured out. She couldn’t see any of the police team but she knew they were in place – and just as cold as she was. They were spread all along the route to the ASU’s target, which the agent had identified as a uniformed police inspector. The terrorists had located his home address through their intelligence-gathering team and the plan was to kill him in front of his house when he arrived home from his office at HQ. Not so unusual – Special Branch had told any number of officers they’d been targeted and that men with guns were coming f
or them. Moving home overnight was part of the job, and if it happened – well, you just thanked your God that something wasn’t stepping out of those shadows behind you.

  Macallan was almost a bystander in this operation, as she was an E Department officer – or what had been known as Special Branch before the Royal Ulster Constabulary had been rebranded as the Police Service of Northern Ireland. It had been part of the deal for peace, a move to make the force more inclusive to the Republican side of the divide. Although the name Special Branch had gone, for the men and women doing the same job it was still the Branch.

  She ran the agent who’d provided the information for the job they were working. Wherever possible Branch officers stayed well away from day-to-day contact with dissidents or operations against them, other than handling the agents who provided so much of the information on their activities. In most cases, the agents had been terrorists during the Troubles or were still involved with the groups who wouldn’t give up the fight. They could have been turned by the Branch for all sorts of reasons: sometimes fear, sometimes money, and very often a basic instinct to survive. The majority were hard, dangerous men and women. Without them the Troubles would have been even bloodier, longer, and at one point might have been lost, such was the scale of carnage when it stretched out to the mainland and Europe. As it was, the security forces’ penetration of the terrorist groups had crippled their capabilities, and, just as importantly, their will to keep the war going.

  The operation had been handed over to a uniformed firearm team who specialised in these situations. They knew what was required and did it with the minimum of fuss, and if the other side wanted to do it the hard way, then that was fine too. The Branch were loathed by the Republicans, and not always loved by everyone on their own side, who saw them playing by a different set of rules to the men and women facing the terrorists on the street.

  The information on this operation had come from one of the most important agents in Northern Ireland, codenamed ‘Cowboy’. Macallan had run him for years, and normally would have handed him over to a more junior rank as she picked up her promotions, but he was just too important to lose and provided paramilitary information from the heart of the organisation. It was these dissident groups that were holding up the peace process, and a big push was being made to knock them out or weaken them to the point where they lost the will to fight. Macallan was worried though – Cowboy had been too close too often, and he was starting to panic. Every time she met him he stank of last night’s booze, and he was spending too much of the money given to him by the taxpayer. In his world, the only people who had money were either touts or one of the increasing number who transferred their skills into drug dealing and organised crime. The trouble was that Cowboy could never claim to be selling drugs – it wouldn’t check out. The peace process was more important than he was; HQ and Whitehall wanted the diehards to hurt as much as possible, and it really didn’t matter if the rules were applied when it was done.

  At the last meet Cowboy had pleaded with Macallan and her co-handler. He lit one cigarette off another and she wondered how someone with so much time on his hands couldn’t clean the crap out of his nails. His fingers were stained yellow and there was a tremor that might have been the drink – or the fact that he knew who was looking for a tout in the ranks.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, get me out of this. They know there’s someone talking and I’m starting to lose it altogether. There’s something in the way the Big Man looks at me now. You know what they’ll do if they find out what I’ve been doing.’

  Against her own instincts Macallan had tried to calm him, although she wouldn’t have been reassured by the sound of her own voice. ‘Look, they’re not killing agents now. They’re just parading them to embarrass the state and police. This is all part of the move to peace. The top boys have told them that they can attack the military or police but not people who’ve turned. The worst that could happen is that you’d be ordered to leave Northern Ireland and we’d sort a new life for you.’

  She’d stirred her coffee slowly and lied to him again. ‘When I get back I’m going to talk to someone, try and get you pulled out so you can start a new life somewhere.’

  It had been hard to keep eye contact, to hear the lies from her own mouth. This was what she hated most – the deceit practised on all sides of the conflict and at every level from politicians down.

  Cowboy used to feel attracted to Macallan. She was aware of this, played on it, all part of the game. Now he could see it all – he was just the shit on their shoes. He’d filled more than a few cells for them in the Maze and another three volunteers were worm food after an Army ambush for which he’d provided the where and when.

  ‘You know what I think? I think you’ve fucked me for the last time. I’ve told you about this job, so just give me my money and I’ll be on my way.’

  Macallan’s stomach had started to rev up, and she’d known the meeting was running out of control. Although Cowboy had been an agent for years, like so many others he was a man bred for violence; agents could and had attacked their handlers when the wheels came off.

  Still stirring the coffee that had long since gone cold, she’d said, ‘Look, it just doesn’t work like that and you know it. I have to know how to get hold of you if there’s a problem.’

  He’d pushed his face so close to hers that the smell of days-old tobacco and bad Chinese food had nearly made her retch. His eyes had been red rimmed and weary, but she’d been close enough to see what was behind them and had tried to hide her fear. You could never show fear to these men. They would smell it from a distance then turn it on you. Small white flecks had popped at the corners of his mouth, which had become a tight straight line, and his fist had hit the table in front of Macallan.

  ‘Give me my fucking money!’

  The co-handler had put his hand on Cowboy’s shoulder, easing him back into his chair. He was pure Ulster and knew how to get through to these boys. ‘Take it easy, son. We’re only talking here. Let me get you a tea and we can all calm down.’

  This had been directed at Macallan as much as Cowboy; he’d known she needed to step back.

  A few minutes later Cowboy had walked off into the dark. ‘What do you think?’ Macallan had asked, staring out of a window into complete blackness.

  The co-handler had thought for a minute. ‘This is Belfast, so who the fuck knows?’

  2

  Grace Macallan walked through Stockbridge, a bustling, well-heeled artery on the edges of Edinburgh’s New Town that led to the leafy playing fields round Fettes College, where Tony Blair claims he first fell in love and played the guitar. She was on her way to Lothian and Borders Police Headquarters to start her new career after her transfer from the PSNI.

  She turned into Fettes Avenue and stopped for a moment to look at the dull square HQ building. It was only a short distance from the dominant and beautiful college, which seemed to reinforce the social ladder that separated the haves and have-nots by several rungs in this ancient city.

  Even after all her years in the service and everything she’d faced, she was nervous and wished she’d waited another week to stop smoking. But she put that out of her mind. This had to be the new start she’d promised herself when she’d looked back on the Belfast shoreline for the last time, and there was time for a coffee before she met the deputy chief constable for the script she could probably predict with some accuracy. She’d be welcomed, told she was valued and no doubt there would be a sign behind the DCC’s desk confirming that the force was an ‘Investor in People’. There would be business speak, a mention of cooperating with partner organisations, but this was the new world, post 9/11, and all the old certainties were gone.

  The PSNI, and particularly the Branch, which had been her life, had been insular, suspicious of anyone who wasn’t them, and it had been fine to stereotype and hate whomever you wanted. Life in the Troubles had been straightforward, at least in that respect. The peace process and the birth of the PSNI ha
d changed so much, and a new generation of modern police officers had started to elbow the old guard towards the door marked ‘retirement’.

  Grace Macallan had been born in Bellshill in North Lanarkshire, no more than ten miles from the centre of Glasgow. Her father had worked in the steel mills but ill health and a declining industry had forced him into the ranks of the long-term unemployed. He’d taken out his anger and disappointment with his own life on his wife and daughter, and while his wife had accepted it as a woman’s role, Grace had never forgiven him for failing to love her and making her mother’s life a misery. Her escapes had been her books, and school, where she’d dreamed of something other than the husband and children that so many of her classmates had clamoured for. Friends had been few but when she was close to someone she had made it special.

  She’d stood out as a student to the surprise of her father, who had seemed almost disappointed by her achievements. She’d walked into Edinburgh University to study law and dreamed of making a difference in the world, but after two years she’d realised that she’d taken the wrong road and that arguing fine detail for a living wouldn’t make the difference she hoped for. A friend who’d dropped out earlier in the course had joined the police service and convinced her that although the pay wasn’t gold plated, working the street made every day an experience.

  Macallan had increased the surprise factor for everyone who knew her by ignoring the mainland forces and going for the RUC, not long before the Good Friday Agreement and the drive for peace. She’d loved it, and it had given her a clean break from the childhood and life she’d dreamt of leaving for years. Fourteen weeks hard training in Garnerville in Belfast had only made her hungry for the front line and her instructors had marked her up as a talented prospect. Ulster had still been on a war footing and there’d been enough hard men still in the fight to keep the force’s guard up. Macallan’d had to learn fast, and there had been hard lessons waiting for her on Belfast’s streets.

  Her father died only months after she’d joined the RUC, but she’d never shed a single tear for him. As far as she was concerned, he’d done nothing to deserve her grief. She saw her mother two or three times a year, and more than anything else she pitied her. She’d been as much a victim of her father’s bullying as her daughter and was happier without him, although she would never have admitted that to a soul.