The Trust

by Ronald H. Balson

  “I can ask them to cooperate, but there’s an ingrained animosity where the Royal Ulster Constabulary is concerned.”

  “We’re not the RUC any more, Liam. PSNI. Police Service of Northern Ireland. Since 2001. Supported by all political parties, left and right.” He tapped an engraved plaque that sat on the corner of his desk. It read THE ACHIEVEMENT OF A PEACEFUL AND JUST SOCIETY WOULD BE THE TRUE MEMORIAL TO THE VICTIMS OF THE VIOLENCE. “That’s straight out of the Good Friday Peace Agreement, and I believe in it.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, but as far as my uncles are concerned, before this department was called the PSNI, it was the RUC, which they regard as a bunch of unionist jaw breakers, you’ll pardon the expression. It reminds me of Abraham Lincoln’s parable: ‘If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?’ It’s four of course, because it doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s still a tail. Northern Ireland may have reorganized its force and renamed it, but to my uncles, it’s still a tail.”

  McLaughlin nodded. “That’s why I asked you to come here today. They’ll all open up to you, Liam. People will talk to you. You can go places I can’t and get information unavailable to me. You can find the hidden pieces to this puzzle. And besides, you know what you’re doing. You did it all in the nineties.”

  I couldn’t believe that he was asking me to snoop on my family again. I was just starting to earn their confidence after deceiving them twenty years ago. I answered immediately, “No. Don’t ask me to be dishonest again. I conned them before, I used them, I betrayed them and I’ll never do that again.”

  “For Chrissake, Liam, I’m not asking you to be dishonest. I’m asking you to help me run an investigation. Do it right out in the open, and don’t limit it to your family, but I do need their help.”

  I was doubtful. It’s not that I didn’t trust McLaughlin, which I didn’t entirely, but how effective could I be? “How can I do that?” I answered. “I have no authority in Northern Ireland. I’m not licensed here. I don’t even have a gun permit.”

  “Well, I’m not asking you to shoot anyone. As for your investigator’s license, that’s a mere technicality. Just ask and I’ll get you whatever authority you need, and I’ll assign one of my top officers to work with you full-time.” He pressed a button on his phone and said, “Send in Sergeant Dooley.”

  “Wait a minute. Dooley? Blond? A hundred and twenty pounds? The one who stood like a pit bull at my uncle’s front door? You want me to partner up with her?”

  McLaughlin laughed. “She’s one of my best.”

  Sgt. Dooley knocked politely on the door and entered. Crisply dressed, she stood at ease in front of McLaughlin’s desk. She gave me a sideways glance and had to stifle a smile.

  “This is Liam Taggart, Sergeant. Do you two know each other?” McLaughlin asked.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I believe he claims to be the owner of the property at 68 Long Road.”

  “Trustee,” I said.

  Another whimsical look from her. Askance. “Pretty sure you said owner.”

  “Maybe I did.”

  McLaughlin interrupted. “Sergeant, I’m assigning you to assist Mr. Taggart, who has generously agreed to help us investigate Fergus Taggart’s homicide. He knows his way around; the CIA stationed him here in the nineties. He’s also a valuable resource to us because of his close relationship to his family. I’d like you to be available to him at all times and make sure he gets whatever he needs.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Just as McLaughlin finished his instructions, my cell phone buzzed. Janie’s message read, “Would you please come out to the house? Eamon and Robert are here with Deirdre. Problem.”

  I showed the text to McLaughlin. “Ah, a family get-together. Why don’t the two of you take a ride out there,” he said. “It’ll be a fine opportunity for Sgt. Dooley to get acquainted.”

  I cringed. “If she goes out there in a uniform, my family will shut us both out. I think she should go in plainclothes and I don’t think she should volunteer that she’s a police officer.”

  McLaughlin nodded. “You’re right.” He shooed her out with a brush of his hand. She saluted, turned with a snap and left to change.

  “You’ll like working with her. She’s very smart and tireless. Not to mention very skilled. She’s an Olympic sharpshooter.”

  “What?”

  “Seriously, it’s true. Megan Dooley captained the UK women’s sharpshooting team in the London Olympics and just missed medaling. Your family will like her even if they find out she’s a police officer.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t know my family. They all cut their teeth in the Lower Falls. There’s resentment that’ll never go away. Even now they’re convinced the murder is a leftover vendetta from the Troubles.”

  McLaughlin put his feet up on his desk and leaned back in his chair. “You think I don’t know the likes of the Taggart clan? Citizens of the Lower Falls? I was there, Liam. As a young officer in the RUC, I was assigned to West Belfast. My unit, a bunch of raw recruits, rolled into the Falls every other day looking for guns. No matter what anyone says—Catholics, Protestants, republicans, loyalists—it was the endless supply of armaments that kept that sectarian war going. Forget the class struggle, the religious differences, the civil rights marches, it could have all been resolved peacefully if it weren’t for the endless supply of weapons.

  “They were coming in from every direction, Liam. From liberal do-gooders in California, to arms merchants in Eastern Europe, to Colonel Ghadaffi himself. You can’t keep a bonfire going unless you keep tossing in more wood. Same with the Troubles.

  “Shit, we’d assemble in the morning, roll down Divis, onto Falls Road, Leeson Street, Ross Road. We were nothing but a bunch of scared twenty-year-olds with flak jackets and rifles. Find those IRA guns, they told us. Find the explosives. We’d go door-to-door. Kids would throw rocks at us. Snipers would take potshots at us. And you know what? We’d find ’em. Sure as hell. Stashes of armaments in basements and closets and back bedrooms. It’s true we’d rough people up, but we’d find the goddamn guns. We’d confiscate ’em and the next day there’d be another shipment coming in. You think we were fighting the Catholics? Hell no. We were fighting the arms merchants.

  “It was big money, Liam. Millions and millions in weapons all paid for by foreign money, Hollywood types, folk singers, do-gooders, and fund-raisers thinking they were donating money to help the poor oppressed Catholics, but what they were really doing was putting that money in the pockets of the arms dealers. You think the RUC was there to oppress the Catholics? I couldn’t have given a shit about the Catholics. Sorry. We weren’t there to oppress anyone. We were trying to take the goddamn weapons away. Look at all your recent conflicts—Bosnia, Somalia, Syria or even the streets of your hometown Chicago—it’s all a money game for the arms merchants. The gun dealers cause more damage to society than any plague ever did.”

  I shared his opinion on the arms merchants, but not on the RUC. There was no disputing the pervasive oppression of the Catholic minority during the Troubles. I changed the subject. “Were you able to get any prints off the papers from the folder or the photographs?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Just yours. Your uncle’s.”

  Just then Megan Dooley walked back into the room. She was sharply dressed in a dark blue suit, midlength skirt, lavender blouse and contrasting scarf. Best-looking policeman I’d ever seen.

  TWELVE

  AS IT TURNED OUT, it was not a fine opportunity to get acquainted. I was taking her to meet my uncles and I thought the family would be thrilled that I brought in someone local to help me with the investigation. I thought they’d be as charmed by Megan Dooley as I was. I was dead wrong. I should have better appreciated the depth of my uncles’ distrust of anyone who wasn’t a Taggart. Especially Uncle Eamon. That was conveyed to me the moment we walked in and Uncle Eamon said, “What is she doing here?”

  “Her name is Megan Dooley and she’s here to
help me. From the minute I got here, you have all asked me to investigate and there’s only so much I can do as an unlicensed PI. Megan’s experienced and fully licensed. All of us have the same goal in mind—finding Uncle Fergus’s killer.”

  “I don’t like airing family laundry with outsiders,” Eamon said, gesturing with his thumb in Megan’s direction. “Is she a Protestant?”

  “I didn’t ask. And I won’t. Don’t insult her. I’m sure you’ll appreciate her help.”

  “We don’t need her help, Liam. Back in the nineties, while you were out snooping, this one here was skipping rope at some fancy Protestant girls’ school in Whitehead. What can she do for us?”

  I started to speak, but Megan stepped forward. “I grew up in Derry, not Whitehead, five of us in a two-bedroom apartment. My father was a mail carrier. No one in my family ever fought in the Troubles. I earned the highest marks in criminal justice at Queen’s University. I captained the UK Olympic sharpshooting team. I’m fully licensed. I can get Liam into places he can’t go. And I’m a damn good rope skipper.”

  Eamon looked at his brother and the two of them shrugged. “I didn’t mean nothing personal,” Eamon said quietly.

  Janie laughed. “If that wasn’t personal, what is?”

  Megan brushed it off. “It’s okay. If I were in your shoes with your history, I might feel the same way.”

  Nice move, I thought. “Let’s get to the text message. What’s the problem? Why are we all together?”

  Eamon handed a letter-sized envelope to me. Inside were two pictures. One was a duplicate of the picture Deirdre had handed to me, the redbrick house, ravaged by a fire and reduced to rubble. But on the back of Eamon’s picture, in block printing, a note read, “PAYBACK TIME TAGGARTS.”

  “It was in my mailbox this morning,” Eamon said. “That picture,” he pointed to the rubble that was once a residence, “do you recognize it?”

  I shrugged and then shook my head.

  “Well, I do. That was Archie Walker’s house, or what was left of it after the fire.”

  “They’ve come back to exact their vengeance,” Robert said quietly. “Marked for death.”

  “But it’s been forty years,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would they wait this long? Why now? And what does that mean, ‘Marked for death’?”

  “Tit for tat, son. Back in the day,” Eamon said, “when someone found a note or a picture like this in his mailbox, people said he was marked for death. It’s a calling card, Liam. Fergus was marked for death and now me. Maybe the Walker boys have been away, maybe they’ve been in prison and now they got out. But it’s them. And isn’t it just like a Walker to boast about a murder and let you know the Butchers are back in business. They want us to know that they exacted their revenge on Fergus and now I’m next in line.”

  I looked carefully at the other picture. It appeared to be taken at a wake. It was obviously in a funeral home, and a unionist one at that. A folded Union Jack hung over the foot of the closed coffin. “What do you make of this?” I said.

  “Why don’t you take a close look at the sign behind the door on the right,” Eamon said. “It’s Archie Walker’s wake. Look at it. Got his name on the sign. The Walkers—they want us to know it’s payback time.

  I put the pictures back in the envelope and handed it to Megan. “What type of security do you have where you live?” she said.

  “I live on the other side of Antrim, fifteen miles up,” Eamon said. “My security is a locked door, a disagreeable dog and a loaded carbine. I’ll be ready for the Walkers, you can bet your ass.”

  I didn’t like the odds of my frail, old uncle shooting it out at the O.K. Corral. “What about moving in with one of your nephews for a while?” I said.

  “Couldn’t and wouldn’t. I won’t be putting them in danger.”

  “You’re welcome to move in here,” Deirdre said. “There’s plenty of room and I’ve got the security company installing a system tomorrow.”

  “Bah. Not necessary. I can take care of myself.”

  I raised my hand like a stop sign. “Hold on, Uncle Eamon, it’s a good idea. Deirdre’s closer to town and I can keep an eye on you.”

  “I will, as well,” Megan said. She took two blank cards and a pen from her pocket, wrote on the cards and handed one to Eamon and one to Robert. “That’s my cell phone number on the card. If you can’t reach Liam, you can call me anytime.” They nodded and smiled. My initial thoughts were correct, Megan radiates competence. She took out a notepad, sat on the edge of the couch and said, “What can you tell me about the Walker family?”

  “The Walkers was just Ulster trash,” Eamon said. “They were part of the Shankill Butchers. Archie was a first lieutenant to Lenny Murphy, as I recall.” He looked directly at Megan and emphasized his points with his index finger. “He was nothing but a dirty bastard who killed in cold blood. He shot my innocent little niece, Molly, her being six years old, and he was responsible for the death of me brother Danny.”

  “This was during the Troubles?”

  Eamon nodded. “Aye. In 1974. Afterward, we heard tell that some righteous Catholics firebombed his house.” Eamon shot a sideways glance at Robert. “Don’t really know who was in it at the time. Heard that Archie had a wife and three kids. He also had three brothers: Thomas, Geoffrey and Edward. One of them was killed by the IRA in 1977. I also heard that one of the Walker boys died in 1982, about the time that Lenny Murphy was killed.”

  “Edward Walker died alongside his partner Lenny Murphy in Dublin,” Megan said. “They never caught the shooter.”

  “And they never will.”

  “What about the third brother, Thomas?”

  “Don’t know. Far as I know, he’s alive somewhere.”

  “Uncle Eamon, I’m going to leave now, but I want you to call me or call Megan if you see anything that doesn’t look right or if you receive any more threats.”

  I walked Megan out to the car. She smiled at me. “Was that your uncle taking credit for Murphy and Walker?”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Right. He’s like so many of his generation, they’ll never let it go. To them, these ancient feuds are like smoldering embers. They never quite go out, and then a wind comes along and ignites a brushfire. Do you think it was one of the Walker clan that killed your uncle?”

  “I didn’t at first, but somebody planted that picture in Fergus’s mailbox before he died and now Eamon’s found two in his mailbox. Marked for death. Sure points to the Butchers.”

  She shook her head. “Not to me. That would be too easy.”

  Megan and I took the pictures back to the station to see whether any useful prints could be identified, but I knew there wouldn’t be. On the way back, I received a call from O’Neill telling me that he confirmed a meeting at Michael Cooney’s office. “Be prepared for a showboat and some fireworks.”

  * * *

  AS MCLAUGHLIN STUDIED THE photos, I filled him in on my telephone call with O’Neill. “Michael Cooney wants to have a meeting. He hasn’t seen the trust and he doesn’t know who the beneficiaries are, so O’Neill opened it up to anyone who wants to appear. All interested parties. I expect the meeting to be noisy and contentious.”

  “Good. If the killer is a related party, he or she will be there and might make a mistake.”

  I was convinced that the killer wasn’t a family member, no matter what McLaughlin thought. I knew the family and no one was that coldhearted. My instincts were pushing me in the direction of a Walker revenge killing, or maybe some other ancient vendetta that I didn’t know about. “What makes you think it’s not a holdover from the Troubles?” I said.

  McLaughlin tilted his chair back and crossed his fingers on his stomach. “I don’t know. I hope to hell it’s not. The last thing we need is the reemergence of another sectarian skirmish. I’m going to work real hard to make sure that doesn’t happen, but I’m not going to eliminate the current cast of characters. Not yet. I’d like to see w
hat happens at the gathering of all interested parties.”

  “Do you want to be there? You’re an interested party.”

  “Interested, yes. Party, no. No one would open their mouth if I was sitting in the room. Take Dooley. She has a keen mind. I told you she’s one of my best.”

  I shook McLaughlin’s hand and left to grab a quick dinner before returning to the hotel. By then it would be time to call Catherine.

  * * *

  “BAD NEWS, CAT. CONOR’S filing a lawsuit and there’ll be a hearing soon. Mr. O’Neill insists I have to stay here and testify at the hearing.”

  “I know you blame me for all this. What is it you say, ‘pick up the telephone and your train goes off the track’?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, don’t worry. Ben and I will get along just fine. Don’t let those wigged barristers intimidate you.”

  I laughed at that. I saw visions of me sitting in the dock at Old Bailey and a robed barrister leveling accusations at me, accosting me in thunderous tones.

  “I don’t think there’ll be any barristers, Cat. The lawyers in the lower courts are solicitors. Just like your colleagues in Chicago. So how are things going at home? Any more of those phone calls?”

  “Yes. Four more. I’m changing the number on the house phone and I’ll keep it unlisted. Call me on my cell until I give you the new number. But don’t worry, we’re fine here.”

  More calls and she says don’t worry? Her indifference only serves to increase my worry. “Cat, it’s so obvious. The calls are coming from Northern Ireland. They want to frighten both of us so that I’ll come home. If you don’t want to come here, then go stay at your sister’s for a while. You’ll feel safer and I need to make sure you’re safe.”

  “These are just prank calls. Even if they are from Northern Ireland, they’re ineffectual. They’re not dangerous.”

  “You don’t know that. They’re clearly a warning. Warnings, if not heeded, can become unwanted consequences. There’s no doubt they’re part of a continuing effort to get me to leave Northern Ireland.”