He signalled to the barman for a top-up. ‘It’s going well and from top to bottom we’re in good shape. That’s the easy bit, and sooner or later it’ll get hard and then we’ll find out what the team is made of. The guys like you, so keep it going, just relax a bit. I know why that’s hard for you, but it’ll come. You’re a talented woman and you need to share yourself with people, because they’ll like that person. Leave the past behind you and get on with life. One bit of advice though.’
She looked up from her glass. ‘What’s that then, Mick?’
‘Don’t do it with JJ. He only wants a long-term relationship with the job. Don’t get me wrong, if you want something short and sweet that would probably do the both of you a bit of good, then fair enough. It’s just he’s not going to do the cottage in the country with a smiling family and loveable dogs. You know that but thought I’d mention it.’
She considered him for a moment and probably should have torn a strip off, reminded him who the boss was and that it wasn’t his business. He was right though, and she knew it, but nothing had happened with O’Connor so no damage done. She decided that no answer was best. ‘Do you fancy getting pissed and telling me some war stories?’
He straightened his shoulders. ‘Did I ever tell you about the flashing minister?’
She smiled, and her green eyes lit up. ‘Perfect, let me get them in.’
Around midnight, Macallan walked along the chilled, quiet street a few minutes from her flat, aching to just climb into bed. She was pleasantly drunk, but considering what she’d put away with Harkins, she knew the following day was going to be hard going. It had been a good night, funny, with an endless exchange of stories, and she’d surprised herself by starting to tell some of her own. Harkins had seen the human being gradually trying to re-enter the world again.
She was in sight of her door when the man stepped out of the shadows. Cursing loudly, and with adrenaline exploding through her body, she fumbled for her personal firearm – which she didn’t carry any more. The man moved towards her and raised his arm. She closed her eyes and waited.
‘Could ye spare a bit change, darlin’?’
She opened her eyes, gasping for air, and stared at the wino. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ She hit him hard right below the heart and he fell backwards. She ran the rest of the way and slammed the flat door behind her. She stripped, stepped into the shower and cried as she washed the day from her body. The warm stream of water calmed her and she sobered up as she rubbed herself dry before slipping into bed and a troubled sleep.
The Belfast Incident
The phone blasted Macallan awake, and when she looked at the clock face it showed 5.30 a.m. That was bad. She was expecting bad news, although not this quickly. Her mouth felt like a tramp’s sock, but that was down to the second large nightcap and the couple of slices of chorizo grabbed from the fridge before she’d crashed out around midnight. She picked up the phone and swung her legs round to plant her feet on the floor. She knew sleeping was over for the day.
It was one of her team giving her the latest bad news. ‘Sorry to bother you at this time of the morning.’
She didn’t want pleasantries. ‘Is there any good news?’
‘I’m afraid not, ma’am.’
‘Well, let’s have the bad.’
The man calling her was one of the best and didn’t deserve a hard time from her. This was as close as she could get to humour at such an early hour.
‘Bertie Gallagher was found near the docks this morning by a couple of locals going to work. He’s pretty badly marked up and finished off with one in the head. No one’s claiming it so far, but it’s early days.’
She dragged her fingers through her hair and thought for a moment. There should have been a question or direction but her head wasn’t ready to cope yet. This was a mess and it was going to be a bad day at the office.
‘Ma’am?’
She apologised and explained that she was thinking. He told her there was more.
‘How bad?’
‘Tommy Doyle collapsed and died in custody just after they started interviewing him. The doc’s not sure but thinks there are signs it was down to some form of blunt force abdominal trauma. Apparently it’s hard to spot – it might have been an injury of some kind picked up much earlier. They’re going to post-mortem him first thing.’
The caller didn’t realise what this meant, but she did. What she’d seen from the OP was blunt force trauma alright. She just hoped that something else had killed Tommy Doyle or she was in a very bad place – and so was Jackie Crawford. Her head hurt and she had to think, make choices that needed to be right. There wasn’t going to be a second chance if she made the wrong call. It hadn’t really occurred to her at the time of the incident because this was Belfast, always the front line of the war, and people got hurt. The Tommy Doyles of this world would never admit that they’d been hurt by a couple of shots from a young Peeler.
She walked through to her small kitchen, pressed the button on her kettle, rinsed last night’s whisky glass and filled it with water. She gulped it down to lubricate her tongue, which was scraping the roof of her mouth, then leaned on the edge of the sink, staring at nothing, and tried to slow the carousel spinning round in her head. Jack – she wanted and needed Jack, but that wasn’t an option at this time of the morning. She’d try to get to Bill Kelly before the commander started to take her apart; alarms would be going off in a lot of corners of the force after a death in custody. Macallan’s problem was stark: if Tommy Doyle had died as a result of the incident she’d witnessed, she could say she saw nothing, but that strategy wasn’t straightforward. She didn’t want to think about the other option.
Bill Kelly was in his office at 7 a.m., as he would have been anyway. When Macallan arrived he had the coffee ready, and, unlike most policemen, he had cups instead of cheap inch-thick mugs. Although they’d known each other as friends for years, he was an ACC and she still knocked at his open door.
‘Come in, and close the door behind you. You still take it black with half a spoon, or have you given that up as well now you’re an athlete?’ He smiled at her.
The sight of him improved her mood, and she noticed for the first time that nearly a quarter of a century of the Troubles was carving some lines into his face. ‘I’ve not given everything up, and that includes good malt. Long time since we shared one or two. I miss those days.’
‘Sit down, Grace. Of course I know what’s happened overnight, and in about half an hour I’m going to have the press, Republican politicians and London thinking that the PSNI is still the RUC and killing good Catholic boys for fun. Use this half hour, because I’ve a feeling you need to. I guess you’ll be seeing your commander, and I don’t envy you. This conversation is not taking place, so fire away.’
Macallan really didn’t know how to get to the point, and everything looked like a bad option. ‘I’m assuming you know that I ran the agent who’s been killed?’
Kelly nodded.
‘I wanted to pull him out. I know the commander will deny all knowledge, but I’ll take care of that myself. It’s Tommy Doyle’s death that’s the problem.’
Kelly didn’t expect this and put his coffee cup back on the saucer. ‘Tell me.’
‘I was in an OP – I watched a young Peeler whack Tommy pretty hard in the guts and he went down hurt. There’s no doubt about what I saw.’
She gave every detail to Kelly and he forgot completely about his morning coffee. He never interrupted her and didn’t need to. He knew exactly what the effects of a high-speed fan and a lot of shit produced.
‘I trained you well enough for you to know what I’m going to tell you already, and you know that whatever you do is going to cost you. If you say you saw nothing and it comes out later that you did, you’ll do prison time – or at the very least lose your career. You can’t do prison time! If you say you saw it then you’re going to put Mr and Mrs Crawford’s only remaining son in prison, and nearly
everyone in the PSNI will think you’re worse than a terrorist. Even then, they’ll hit you with failing to report the incident and a lot of Republicans will think he might have lived if you’d intervened, which of course is nonsense. That’s quite a pile of problems to be getting on with.’
Macallan tried to interrupt. He put his hand out, palm up, and leaned forward in his chair. ‘You came here for my advice; well, I’ll give it to you. This country has to change, the war’s all but over apart from a few dissidents, and unless all sides change with it we’ll end up in the same sewer we’ve been in all these years. You know this, and the first mistake you made was that you didn’t report it right away. Showing people on the other side we can do the right thing will help to get us to something like peace. You saw a prisoner in custody assaulted and walked away because that’s how it is. We used to operate using noble cause as justification for certain actions. Those days are gone, Grace.’
Bill Kelly lit a cigarette and broke his rule about not smoking before breakfast. Macallan stayed quiet; she knew that he was far from finished.
‘My heart will ache for the Crawfords, but thousands of families have been hurt in this fight, and the days of closing ranks are over. A few years ago, I would have done what you did and looked the other way. We have to show we’re better than that, which means we’ll take casualties, and we won’t be loved for it.’
He saw the effect he was having on Macallan, and a half- smile cut across his face. ‘Christ, I told you a long time ago that no one loves us in this job anyway! Jackie Crawford was trained like everyone else, and in a fair world his family wouldn’t have to take another blow and that’s the truth. But this is bigger than you or Jackie Crawford; the fact that he might do time and you’re going to be as welcome as Martin McGuinness in an Orange lodge is not the point. I’m not telling you one way or the other – I’ll leave it to you. Your commander won’t like the truth, and God knows how you’ll get round him. He’s not a bad man – in fact, quite the opposite in his own way. We needed men like him at the height of the Troubles and we’d have lost without them. He saw so many of his friends die, and two attempts on his life means he deserves a bit of understanding. He’ll tell you the opposite of what I’ve said, but he’s the past and that’s the decision you have to make. Do the right thing and there will probably be some form of discipline for not reporting it right away. You’ll survive, but I’m not sure if you’ll survive in Ulster.’
Kelly sipped his coffee and realised it was cold. They both stood at the same time and he walked across the room and held her in his arms. He’d never done this in all the time they’d known each other. She left the room without speaking, thinking she’d have a cigarette before facing the commander. She’d cut her smoking to two or three a day, but this wasn’t the time to worry about her tobacco consumption.
The commander looked at Macallan without a smile or welcome when she walked through the door of his office. ‘Have a seat, Chief Inspector.’
Macallan had made her decision, and this was no time to let this man walk over her. She’d tried to get Cowboy pulled out, he knew it, but the agent wasn’t the real problem – and he didn’t know what the real problem was yet.
He took his time sorting out something that looked like tea, and once again made sure that he didn’t offer her one. He sat, pretended to look at some papers in front of him and spoke without raising his eyes to her.
‘Bit of a problem last night with your boy. Well, he’s not the first one we’ve lost and there’ll be some flak, but we’ll survive that. As for wee Tommy Doyle, well, that man fought all his life and was a born drunk, so no doubt there’ll be a reasonable explanation for his death. There’ll be an investigation, but from what I can see he was handled properly and there are no reports from anyone that there was a problem. No doubt you’ll be seen as part of that investigation, but nothing to worry about, Chief Inspector.’
He’d said exactly what she’d expected and avoided her concerns about the agent. ‘The agent was set up, sir,’ she replied. ‘That’s a problem, and we let him down.’
She avoided pointing the finger directly at him, because he could always argue that he’d made a decision for the right reasons and to save lives. She decided to get to the point. ‘There’s also a problem with Tommy Doyle’s death, and I’ll have to report it to the investigation team.’
The cup was halfway to the commander’s mouth and stopped about there. Macallan definitely had his attention now. He put the cup down on the desk, picked up a pen and tapped the table, looking straight at her. Keeping eye contact with this man was no easy matter but she did her best – knew she needed to be strong.
‘I think I said to you, Miss Macallan, that there were no problems that I’m aware of.’ She knew this was getting serious if he was using her name. He paused for a moment. ‘So if there’s a problem, it must be with you then?’
She tried to keep her hands still on the arms of the chair. ‘After Doyle was arrested last night, he was walked to the van by a young Peeler and I saw him give Doyle two hard digs in the stomach. I mean hard digs because Doyle went down and was hurt. No doubt about it. I know the Peeler is young Jackie Crawford.’
The commander did not want to hear any Peeler’s name connected to an assault on Tommy Doyle the night he died – but Jackie Crawford was the last name he wanted up for discussion. He’d served with Jackie’s father as a young recruit himself and knew exactly what price the family had paid in the Troubles.
‘I want you to think very carefully before you say any more. You know exactly what the Crawfords have been through. You know exactly what this evidence will mean if that’s what you think you witnessed. Tommy Doyle was a fighting drunk who probably should have been dead a long time ago given the life he led. No one will shed a tear for Doyle – not even those in his own organisation. Jackie Crawford has a family; the PSNI and the majority of the people of Northern Ireland are behind him. Think, Chief Inspector.’
She knew that she’d already passed the point of no return and guessed that there would be days ahead when she’d wish that she’d looked the other way. Too late for that though, and she straightened up in her chair.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but that’s what I saw. And before you say it, I should have reported it at the time; as an SB officer I wanted to stay away from the street in case we were spotted. I was wrong not to report it and I’ll accept the consequences, but there was no doubt about what I witnessed – Tommy Doyle was assaulted after his arrest.’
The commander took a deep breath and realised they were in a stalemate. He had to be careful he wasn’t accused of orchestrating a cover-up. He was too close to retirement for that.
‘You have to do what you have to do, Chief Inspector, and I would imagine the investigation team will be seeing you later today. I’ll make a note of this conversation. So is there anything else?’
‘No, sir.’
The tension in the room calmed, and she left wondering where this would go.
The commander stood up from his desk and looked out at the dark, fat clouds dropping rain on Belfast. He knew there’d been no point in going further with Macallan – she’d made up her mind, and he couldn’t change that. Nevertheless, what she was going to do to Jackie Crawford was a betrayal. The boy had been stupid, but he could guess what had happened and the Crawfords would have to take another blow for the peace process and Ulster. The commander could do something though, and he decided to change Grace Macallan’s life for ever. He picked up the phone and told his secretary to call Jack Fraser, and ask him to come to HQ.
Jack Fraser arrived at his office late and thumbed through the pile of messages left on his desk from the previous day. He saw the call from the commander and didn’t make too much of it. He had regular meetings with senior Branch officers to discuss cases or provide guidance on whether investigations should go ahead or be dropped. He’d heard a news report about a death in custody, and a body found near the docks, so it could be one of the many pr
oblems law enforcement had to deal with in the city.
Things were reasonably quiet so he decided to take care of the commander’s problem early, and with a bit of luck he might bump into Grace. He would call her anyway and arrange something for the evening. He thought about how good they were together, and although she tended to be a bit serious, he could always make her laugh. But then she was entitled to be serious dealing with life in the Branch; it was hard enough for the men but even tougher for the women.
When Fraser arrived at the commander’s office, he knew it was something serious as the secretary had laid on biscuits and coffee in a pot rather than stirred up in a mug that hadn’t been washed properly in a week.
‘Sit down, Jack, and I’ll fix your coffee. White and no sugar?’
Fraser nodded and wondered what was up – because the commander didn’t do nice. In all the years he’d been acquainted with the man, all he’d ever known him to do was work. He seemed to live in the office. In fact, there was a standing joke that the commander had never actually been seen in daylight and slept hanging upside down in an office cupboard. And now . . .
There was something wrong in the atmosphere.
‘What can I do for you, Commander? I know there were some problems overnight and presume you need legal counsel?’
The commander gave Fraser his coffee, offered the biscuits and seemed disappointed when he refused. He took his seat. ‘There’s a problem, and it’s a delicate one. I’m a blunt man as you know, so we’ll get right to it as we’re both busy men.’
He explained what had happened overnight and that an investigation was already underway. Fraser relaxed, thinking that this was just another tough day at the office; all these things had happened before and would be resolved one way or another. This was their business, but then his train of thought was stopped in its tracks.
‘The problem is Grace Macallan.’
Cause of Death Page 5
