by Matt McGuire
‘Fuck you,’ Marty mumbled, walking on, not looking up.
The nurse felt smug, glad that she had been right about him. Marty took the stairs down to the main doors and walked out of the hospital. He headed down the Grosvenor Road, walking under the stern gaze of a wrought-iron statue of Queen Victoria. The plump woman stared pitilessly out over his head, her eyes fixed on the horizon in the small corner of her once-mighty empire.
***
O’Neill and Ward approached Peter Kennedy’s bed. They looked down at the two legs, covered in white plaster. The kid had had the shit beaten out of him. There was no other way to describe it. O’Neill knew they were wee bastards, a bunch of hoods. He didn’t think they deserved this though. You wouldn’t do it to an animal.
An old woman had settled herself near the head of the bed. She looked up at the two men, clocking them instantly for who and what they were.
‘What do yous want?’ she demanded.
O’Neill introduced himself and Ward. Petesy’s granny remained stone-faced, barely masking her contempt.
‘We need to talk to Peter,’ he told her.
‘You need? Where were you three nights ago, when he needed you?’
O’Neill had to change tack, bypass the old woman, talk to the boy. The kid was on morphine and would be pretty high. He could distract him, make him forget they were peelers, if only for a minute or two.
He caught sight of FourFourTwo. It had a picture of the Liverpool midfielder Steven Gerrard on the front cover.
‘Please don’t tell me you are a Liverpool fan.’
The boy looked up. ‘Man U, actually.’
‘Even worse. Beckham, Giggs, that crowd? Posers, the lot of them. Spend half their lives combing their hair. And the Nevilles? Don’t get me started. Talk about Dumb and Dumber.’
‘Aye. So who is your team?’ the boy shot back.
‘Everton. A real football team. No primadonnas or wannabe fashion models.’
‘Everton. Are they First Division? What’s the last thing they won?’
‘FA Cup, 1995.’
Petesy laughed.
‘FA Cup? Try the treble. League title, FA Cup and the Champions League. That’s a real football team.’
The grandmother was shrewd and saw what was happening, where the cop was trying to lead him.
‘I don’t care what you know about football,’ she snapped at O’Neill. ‘He’s got nothing to say to you.’
O’Neill turned to the boy. ‘Is that right, Peter?’
The boy looked round the room. The two men across the ward were pretending not to be interested. Petesy had felt their stares for two days though. He knew they hated him. If he spoke to the peelers, people would find out. Not only would he be drug-dealing scum, he’d be a tout as well. He saw the expression on his grandmother’s face. She was right. Where were the peelers two nights ago? And they wouldn’t be there if Molloy and Tierney came for him again. He remembered the pain, lying there waiting for the ambulance, his legs on fire, wishing someone would just cut them off. That was what he needed to remember. The pain, only the pain.
He pinned his gaze to the two white casts, hanging up in front of him.
‘I’ve nothing to say to yous.’
O’Neill stared at the bed. The kid was right. He didn’t have anything to say. Even if he knew who did it, which he probably didn’t, he couldn’t say. There wasn’t a single peeler lived in the Markets or any of the areas where these punishment beatings happened. The cops didn’t have to leave their house looking over their shoulder, worrying about more of the same. The only thing more dangerous than being a drug dealer was being a tout. O’Neill left his business card on the end of the bed. If Peter changed his mind. .
As they walked down the corridor O’Neill remember the kid in the white Kappa top, the one who’d brushed past him. He stopped at the nurse’s station.
‘How’s the hardest-working nurse in the hospital?’
The nurse frowned at him. She’d heard it all before and was having none of it. O’Neill read the signs and went for the easy route, producing his warrant card. The nurse relaxed a little, feeling the unspoken bond between the two professions. O’Neill asked about the tracksuit, whether he had been visiting the boy who’d had his knees done. The woman glanced from side to side. They weren’t allowed to talk about patients. Strict hospital rules. She gave an almost imperceptible nod of agreement before announcing for her colleague four feet away, ‘I’m sorry. We’re not allowed to discuss anything to do with patients.’
‘I understand completely,’ O’Neill said politely. ‘Thanks.’
The two men turned and headed for the lift. It took them to the ground floor of the RVH and back on to the street again.
TWENTY-NINE
Lynch walked along Cromac Street on his way into town. It was drizzling and he moved quickly along the pavement, his head down and collar up.
He had slept for twelve hours after being out on the job with Molloy, dozing off as he replayed the night in his head. The sounds and smells became a form of mood music: the car, the orange street lamps, the sound of Molloy’s breath, the weight of the Glock. As Lynch relived each sensation, his eyes began to grow heavy and sleep came and took him. A pressure valve had been released. He didn’t take any tablets. He didn’t need to. It was the job that had done it. Lynch knew it. Walking along Cromac Street in the rain, he knew it. Just being there, being involved. It had been enough.
A silver Mercedes slowed and pulled in alongside Lynch. Its tinted rear window slid down and Gerry McCann’s voice came out of the back seat.
‘Joe. Come on in out of the rain. I need a word with you.’
Lynch looked up and down the street before ducking into the car. The Mercedes pulled out quietly into the morning traffic. The car was stopped at traffic-lights halfway down Victoria Street. The rumble of a building site came through the tinted glass windows. McCann pointed to his left.
‘Look at the state of that, would you? Another frigging shopping centre. I swear, these guys are better at flattening this city than we ever were.’
Lynch looked at a pair of steel cranes rising high over the city skyline.
‘Molloy told me you were good the other night. Said he reckons you might have what it takes.’ McCann laughed at the idea. Molloy, still in his twenties, providing a reference for Joe Lynch. ‘These kids, Joe. No sense of history. They think the world didn’t exist before they strode on to the scene and took centre stage.’
McCann knew it would work in Molloy’s favour, not knowing too much about who he was partnering. He was a good worker, reliable, and remorseless when he needed to be. Sometimes a bit of ignorance could be bliss.
McCann tossed a brown envelope on Lynch’s lap. He picked it up, not needing to open it.
‘Here. That’s five hundred quid. You’ve earned it. Take that wee girl out for a drink. Get yourself laid. I’m sure it’s been a while.’
Lynch held the envelope in his hand, feeling its weight. He didn’t want it. He didn’t want cars slowing at kerbs beside him. He didn’t want heads turning when he walked into a bar. He didn’t want people watching their words when they spoke to him. And he didn’t want the likes of Molloy thinking they were on the same side. He knew though that giving it back would provoke more hassle than it was worth.
Outside the car, people hurried along Victoria Street under umbrellas, trying not to get wet.
‘I have a proposition for you, Joe. Another job. This one’s a little more, how would you say, technical. Needs more than a bit of taxi driving. Needs a man with some subtlety, some patience, some experience.’
Lynch stayed silent, trying to plot his way out of the car and whatever it was McCann was thinking up for him.
‘Twenty grand. That’s what it’s paying.’
It was a hit. Lynch knew straight away. He waited though, wanting to hear McCann say it. The other man paused, allowing the money to hang in the air for a while, allowing Lynch to imagine what he’
d do with it, the doors it would open, the possibilities. After ten seconds McCann spoke.
‘Could you kill a peeler?’
McCann asked the question like you might ask for a light. He turned to Lynch, reassured by the lack of reaction that he’d picked the right man. Lynch wasn’t Molloy, he wasn’t like anyone in the crew. They were all keen, but they were young. They wanted to prove to the world how hard they were, how ruthless. Lynch knew the lie of the land though. He could do something and shut up about it. He didn’t need to brag or try and make a name for himself. Discretion. Professionalism. That was it. He was a professional.
‘What has he done?’ Lynch asked.
‘You don’t need to worry about that.’
McCann had barely said the words when he realized it wouldn’t work with Lynch. He wasn’t some twenty-one year old with a high opinion of himself. He couldn’t just be given an order and expected to blindly follow it.
‘He’s one of Jack Ward’s. He’s messing with my business, lifting people left, right and centre. We’ve become an itch he can’t scratch. Nights off he’s camped outside The George. He’s sniffing round Mint. Asking people questions — the kind of people that don’t want to be asked questions. He’s not going to go away on his own. So we’re going to help him go away.’
Lynch could tell from McCann’s voice that this was a done deal, no longer a question of ‘if’ but rather ‘how’. The peeler was already dead, he just didn’t know it. The clock had started.
McCann resumed his sales pitch. ‘This is your out, Lynch. One last job. A one-time deal. Twenty grand — think what you could do with that. A man could start over, with that amount of money. Head off to the sun. Maybe even take a girl and her wee one away with him. If he was inclined that way.’
Lynch looked at the rain bouncing off the grey Belfast pavements.
‘Picture it. Walking along some Spanish promenade. A wee breeze off the sea, the sunshine. No one knows who you are, no one cares.’
Lynch pictured Marie-Therese in a summer dress and a big straw hat, pushing the buggy in front of her. He imagined them stopping at an ice-cream joint, the kind with wicker chairs out front. A cold beer for him, an ice cream for her. The sun would have just started to dip.
‘Who is he?’
‘It’s a soft target. We have an address and all. He lives alone, in a flat off the Stranmillis Road.’
McCann passed Lynch a photograph. It was one of the peelers who had followed him. The man looked to be in his late thirties. He was walking through Castlecourt shopping centre and the shot had been taken as he turned his head to the right.
‘What’s the name?’ Lynch asked.
‘O’Neill.’
‘Killing a peeler brings a lot of heat. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.’
‘You let me worry about that.’
‘What about Stormont? The Peace Process? The Unionists will say this is business as usual, that nothing’s changed. They’ll want to bring the whole thing down. Get the Brits back on the streets.’
McCann smiled ruefully.
‘You’ve been away too long, Joe. Or maybe you read too many books in prison. United Ireland? Great Britain? It doesn’t matter any more. No matter who you vote for, the government still gets in. These days, the only countries that matter are Colombia and Afghanistan. It’s about product, not politics. Politics is dead. The only kind of green that people round here care about is in that envelope I just tossed you.’
McCann ordered the driver to stop the car.
‘The peeler needs to be done, Joe.’
Lynch remained silent. McCann patted him on the arm, laughing.
‘That’s what I thought you’d say. It needs to happen this week.’
Lynch got out of the car. In the centre of Belfast the rain had worsened. He walked along Donegall Avenue looking into shop windows advertising the remnants of January sales. He felt the envelope in his pocket and thought about buying something for Marie-Therese, or maybe the wee one. He hesitated outside a shop, thinking about the money. Was he a criminal now? Is that what had happened? He felt like a tout. Like someone who had turned his back on his friends. Had he sold them out?
Lynch thought about night-time in the Maze, lying in his cell, six by eight foot. He had nothing in there. But it didn’t matter. He had a reason. He’d taken a stand. Burton was right. He’d been backed into a corner. You couldn’t just sit there and take it. Pretend it was OK, waiting for someone else to come along. It was the only way. Someone had to do the hard yards, get their hands dirty, put themselves on the line.
This was what Lynch had told himself. Night after night, listening to the screws walk up and down the corridors, trailing their sticks along the doors to keep the prisoners awake, fucking with them just for the fun of it. This was what he told himself to placate the ghosts, the faces that visited him as he lay trying to sleep. The off-duty RUC man, the part-time soldier, the fourteen-year-old boy. The last one was an accident. The bomb went off before the coded warning was called in. ‘Collateral damage’ was what they called it. It was a war. Things happened.
What about now though? The five hundred quid. The twenty grand. What was that money for?
He thought about the hunger strikes. Bobby Sands and nine others. Starving themselves to death. All to tell Maggie Thatcher they weren’t criminals. Was she right though? Was this what they were? Was this what they’d become?
A woman pushing a child in a buggy went past Lynch, hurrying into a shop out of the rain. Ten grand. This was his chance. He could leave Northern Ireland for good. Start over. It had been a mistake coming back. What had he expected to find when he returned from London? The buildings were different, sure, but the place was the same. The same faces, the same bullying, the same bragging. The same men, telling the same stories in the same pubs. Was it McCann? Was it people like him? You couldn’t get rid of him. If you did, someone else would step in and fill the void. McCann was right. It wasn’t about your country, your comrades, your cause. It was about money, pure and simple. Lynch looked at people rushing into shops, hurrying to buy things, to get the latest gadget, the latest designer jackets. Money didn’t have a conscience. It didn’t care about flags. It didn’t care where it came from.
Lynch’s eyes narrowed. He pulled up his collar and turned down Donegal Avenue. He could do one more. One more, then out for good. It was the only way.
Ward was furious.
He had been sitting in his office after a briefing meeting when Wilson had knocked on the door. There had been an unofficial complaint made against O’Neill. Ward’s ears had pricked up immediately. An ‘unofficial’ complaint? You either had a complaint or you didn’t. And if you did, then be man enough to at least stand behind it.
O’Neill had been spotted in the middle of the night, climbing over the fence at Laganview. Ward went on the attack.
‘He’s investigating a murder, sir.’
‘I know what he is doing, Inspector.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘Climbing back into a crime scene at four o’clock in the morning? It’s not exactly how we want people to see the police operating, is it?’
‘A murder investigation? I think people want to see the police arresting people and putting them away. I don’t think they care how many fences have to be climbed to get it done.’
‘You know what I’m talking about, Ward. Anyway, this isn’t an argument — I’m telling you. Next time, O’Neill’s getting an official warning. Conduct unbecoming.’
Ward knew Wilson would have liked to have gone the whole hog this time. He couldn’t though. If the complaint wasn’t official there’d be no record and you couldn’t go after someone with a piece of hearsay.
How did it end up on Wilson’s desk though? These things normally went through official channels which always bypassed local command structures. There was only one person who’d have the balls to call in with something like that, and call it in directly to Wilson — Spender.
Ward grabbed a set of car keys from his desk and stormed out of the office. In the corridor he blew past DC Kearney who was on his way to see him. ‘Inspector War-’
Ten minutes later, Ward was outside a glass office block on Linenhall Street. He parked on double yellow lines. Policeman’s privilege. Inside, he took the elevator to the twelfth floor where he was greeted by walls of glass. At reception a girl sat beneath the large stylized logo of Spender Property. She looked up.
‘Can I help-’
Ward walked past her as if she wasn’t even there. He heard her lift the phone behind him. ‘Security. .’
A few twists and turns, and Ward found Spender’s office. He marched past the PA and opened the heavy wooden door.
‘Excuse me! What do you think you are doing?’ a shrill voice demanded from behind him.
The office was empty. Ward turned and rounded on the girl at the desk.
‘Where is he?’
The girl was in her thirties, immaculately made up. The kind of girl who is attractive and definitely knows it. Ward had seen the type a million times. There wasn’t a PA in the world who wasn’t on a power trip. They controlled access to the MD and always thought they were the most important person in the whole company.
The girl was affronted that someone could dare to walk into the office and make demands of her like that. She made to dig her heels in. She’d heard Carol on reception call down for Security and they’d be there any minute.
Ward leaned over the desk, six inches from her face, seething.
‘Listen to me, love. And listen carefully. If you don’t want to be arrested right now for obstructing a police investigation, you’ll tell me where he is.’
The girl wobbled under the threat. Ward saw it in her eyes and closed in, speaking quickly.
‘I’m going to count to three. One. Two. Thr-’
‘Laganview. He’s at Laganview. They have a meeting down there with. .’
Ward turned on his heel and was off, halfway down the corridor.
At reception Carol stood next to a security guard, pointing at Ward as he marched towards them. The guard made to come forward. The detective pulled out his warrant card as he walked past.
