The Psalm Killer

by Chris Petit

  They agreed that Mary’s daring excursions into loyalist territory could have backfired horribly. Once she’d been discovered, it would be assumed she was a spy.

  ‘What do you know,’ he asked slowly, ‘about the Shankill Butchers?’

  Westerby took a long time answering. ‘Do you think what we’re dealing with is anything to do with them? It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Twelve years.’

  ‘I thought they’d all been locked up.’

  ‘Most of them were, about eight years ago.’

  Lenny Murphy, the most notorious of the Butchers, had been shot in an ambush a few years earlier, Cross remembered. His death had not been mourned and the police had made no great effort to catch his killers. Murphy’s abrupt departure had been seen by most as his just deserts. He had been responsible for the abduction, torture and murder of any number of Catholics. Cross knew from other policemen that the investigation had been a harrowing affair – a seemingly endless catalogue of unparalleled brutality. The savagery of the violence had been bad enough. What had made it even more barbaric was that it had been watched – and applauded – by an audience. Cross suddenly wondered how many witnesses to that sickening violence were still at large.

  ‘Let’s suppose,’ he said to Westerby, ‘Mary was in the Strathaven when she was challenged about being a Catholic. What then?’

  ‘Maybe they would have taken her upstairs and slapped her around a bit and then it got out of hand.’

  ‘Or maybe it was more deliberate and someone remembered how they did it all those years ago.’

  Westerby considered. ‘Yes and no,’ she said. It was always a surprise to find herself discussing revolting crimes so calmly. ‘Let’s say Mary Elam was killed more or less as we’ve said. It got out of hand and perhaps someone squeezed too hard. Let’s also say there were several men in the room when it happened.’

  Cross nodded and told her to go on.

  ‘Let’s say that her murder acted as a trigger on one of the men in the room. Someone not necessarily directly involved, but just watching.’

  ‘Your looker?’

  Westerby nodded.

  Cross realized what she was getting at. ‘And this man was a witness to the previous murders of twelve years earlier?’

  Westerby nodded again and said she thought that Mary Elam’s death might have prompted this man to go off and murder Mary Ryan, which fitted the style of the previous Shankill killings.

  ‘But is he acting alone or with others?’ asked Cross.

  ‘I’d say we’re dealing with a man with a kink. He’s imitating the earlier killings – which he witnessed – but for his own gratification.’

  It was a bold theory, he had to hand her that. He wondered whether he should tell Cummings, in case it had any bearing on the Elam investigation. He decided not, partly because it was pure speculation, and because he neither liked nor trusted Cummings. Let him stew. Instead he told Westerby to look up the records on the Shankill murders and to make a list of anyone who had been questioned in connection with them and not charged.

  He decided to visit the Strathaven by himself early that evening. He went and sat at the bar. McElwaine glowered at him, saying nothing, and served him with bad grace. Cross’s presence cast a spell over the place. As the bar filled up there were sullen whispers and stares in his direction, and silence. In spite of what McElwaine had told him, strangers were distinctly unwelcome. He lasted half an hour, then left. The beer left a nasty taste.

  They whittled it down to several names, the likeliest being a man called Willcox, a known UDA member with suspected connections to the UVF, current whereabouts unknown.

  Cross scanned Westerby’s neatly typed report on Willcox. Born 1953. Mechanic. He’d worked for his uncle, who owned a lock-up workshop, between 1969 and 1972, taking over the business after the uncle’s death. In 1977 he was questioned during the Shankill inquiry. No charges were brought, though it was believed that Willcox had been present at several of the killings. He had been questioned in 1979 about receiving a stolen car and again the case was dropped. The last note of him was in 1983, when the police were called in after a domestic dispute, but Willcox’s wife had refused to press charges. The WPC calling round a week later to check that she was all right – because Willcox was thought capable of further violence – had been verbally abused by her and accused of snooping.

  The last listed address for him was not far from the Strathaven Bar, though his regular was a pub called the Windsor. Cross knew the Windsor. It was a mean dive that people crossed the street to avoid. Any stranger going in was taking his life in his own hands, but this seldom happened as there was usually a gang of skinhead toughs hanging around outside to deter entry to anyone other than the elect.

  ‘Big John wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ was the landlord’s verdict on Willcox to Hargreaves.

  They went through the usual rigmarole, with the landlord keen to express support for the police. Hargreaves knew the way it went off by heart – first a family history of distinguished service in the British army, followed by the declaration that though there were some bad people about they did not come from around there. This was invariably followed by remarks about what a dirty lot the Papists were. The landlord knew nothing of Willcox’s whereabouts, of course.

  ‘He was never in here much.’

  And so it went on, from everyone Hargreaves questioned – the false show of concentration, the shifty eyes, the flat denials, interspersed with looping, meaningless pleasantries.

  No one had seen Willcox since he’d left his wife eighteen months earlier, though Hargreaves was under the impression that several of his old acquaintances still did on the quiet.

  ‘Do we have the slightest idea where Willcox is?’ Cross asked Hargreaves, who appeared restless and distracted.

  ‘His wife hasn’t seen him since he went. There’s a brother in the British army. He says he’s lost touch too. There’s an ancient mother who makes no sense and denies having a son called John.’

  Cross caught Hargreaves glancing at the clock.

  ‘What do you think the effect would be on someone attending those Romper Room sessions?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, sir. Nightmares, probably.’

  Hargreaves looked keen to get away, although it was only half past four. No doubt he wanted to beat the traffic and get to his boat.

  ‘Were the Shankill victims always men?’ Cross asked.

  ‘As far as I can remember, sir.’

  Hargreaves looked relieved when he was told he could go. As he left he asked, in a way that suggested he was only humouring Cross, if he thought Willcox was really a throwback to the Shankill murders, killing women this time.

  ‘It’s the first thing we’ve come across which might explain why Mary Ryan was killed.’

  Mrs Willcox was a tiny, haggard woman, with a hatchet mouth and an ash-blonde rinse. She was making heavy weather of her thirties but in spite of that her manner was feisty. Cross found it hard to picture her with her husband. The police photograph of Willcox showed a big surly man, with a thin moustache and a look of cunning, well over six foot and running to fat. His wife by contrast was rake thin and not five foot.

  Her first remark, made on the doorstep, repeated verbatim what she had told Hargreaves: she did not care if her dead-hopeless-fuck of a husband was upside down in shit. She invited Cross and Westerby in warily, torn between a natural mistrust of being seen with the police and a desire to pour out her bile.

  ‘The fellows’ll tell you Big John was as nice as the day was long, laughing and joking. I dare say, but he wiped the smile off his face when he came through that door.’

  Cross remarked clumsily that they knew about Willcox’s violence. He watched her mouth tighten.

  ‘Just like any other fellow that’s had a skinful. I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing, if that’s what you’re after.’

  Cross found her bitterness too painful and stared instead at the impoverished r
oom, leaving Westerby to do the questioning. He admired the way she gradually drew the woman out, encouraging her to admit the extent of her husband’s violence and how it dominated her life. Even with him gone, she still seemed curiously resigned to its inevitability.

  ‘It’s not like it’s only me.’

  She ground out her cigarette, dragging the pinched butt across the ashtray long after it was out, then lit another.

  ‘It’s not exactly news, is it?’ she went on. ‘When the boys run around punching each other up in the air it’s on the telly, but when they come home and give the wee woman a diggin’ who cares?’

  She lapsed into sullen silence. Cross realized that his presence was inhibiting her. He excused himself, telling Westerby that he had papers to check in the car.

  She joined him twenty minutes later.

  ‘Tuesdays and Fridays without fail,’ she said. ‘And sometimes he beat her on Saturdays, for good measure.’

  ‘Badly?’

  ‘He pulled her around the house by her hair.’

  ‘And she never complained, or only the once,’ he said. ‘Is it just fear that stopped her complaining?’

  ‘And a lack of self-esteem. These women often believe the violence is their fault. Even more shameful than the violence is others knowing about it.’

  She turned to Cross, her face tense with anger.

  ‘He poured a kettle of boiling water over her vagina, when she was pregnant, and afterwards he just laughed and told her to stop making a fuss.’

  Cross found it difficult to hold her eye.

  ‘Mrs Willcox is right. It would be more terrifying if it weren’t so common,’ she went on. ‘Who cares? We don’t. We don’t even keep a record of cases of domestic violence, and nor do the hospitals. Can you tell me why that is, sir?’

  Cross knew the answer but did not say. Cases of domestic violence were not considered important and happened too often. He had sat on a committee where the matter had come up and nothing had been done.

  ‘I’ve got one lead,’ said Westerby. ‘The address of Willcox’s lock-up garage.’

  It was a dilapidated lock-up in a row of several under some railway arches. Most of them had an air of being permanently shut. One or two were open, little makeshift repair shops surrounded by gutted vehicles and guarded by malevolent dogs. None of the mechanics remembered the last time Willcox’s lock-up had been in use.

  They returned with a search warrant. Once inside the dingy, vaulted space, Cross found himself in what had once been a workshop, with a hydraulic lift and a space for a second car. There were old oil stains on the floor, like black blood. At the back was an office partitioned off by a glass screen and next to it a dirty toilet and a tap with running water. A train rumbled overhead.

  In spite of the general filth, Cross noticed that the basin had been recently wiped and the surface of the office desk was unnaturally clean. Stuffed into a cupboard he found what looked like a recently purchased bottle of disinfectant and some rags. On the strength of that he told Westerby to get forensic to go over the whole garage.

  On the way back to town Cross asked to be dropped off at the City Hospital. He went up to the sixth floor where Maureen McMahon still lay in her coma. He half expected a man on the door but there wasn’t. When there was no answer to his knock he went in and left a note for McMahon. Maureen lay perfectly still. It was unsettling to think of her being in exactly the same state as when all this had started sixteen weeks before or more.

  McMahon called the next day. He warily agreed to meet Cross in the hospital canteen.

  They sat in a corner and drank tea. Cross watched McMahon spooning sugar into his cup and thought he didn’t look like a sugar man. The bodyguard sat separately, next to the double swing doors, watching anyone who entered without being seen.

  ‘I have two murder victims, both women, both Catholic,’ said Cross. ‘You probably read about the second in the papers.’

  ‘The one that was stabbed?’

  Cross nodded and went on. ‘The other was a semi-prostitute, possibly working on the fringes of sectarian activity, which might have brought her into contact with the sharp end of your business.’

  McMahon smiled, refusing to rise to the bait. ‘Your point, inspector?’

  ‘It’s just conceivable both women were killed by the same man. This is not a theory shared by my superiors, so I am out on a limb. But if I’m right, he’ll kill again, and he’s not one of your ODCs.’

  ODCs were Ordinary Decent Criminals, a term used to distinguish them from terrorists. Cross looked at McMahon. They both knew that the paramilitaries ran crime in the city, and policed it. Between them there was not much that went on that they did not know about.

  ‘Are you saying it’s a Prot killing these girls?’

  ‘All I’m saying is that this man may be operating within your general boundaries.’

  ‘But you’ve no leads?’

  Cross spread his hands. He did not want to tell McMahon about the lock-up or his suspicions of Willcox.

  ‘What do you want me to do? Apart from give you a long list of UVF activists you could start by questioning.’

  Cross was momentarily thrown by McMahon’s mischievousness. He was starting to like the man.

  ‘I’m outside my brief even talking to you. I’m just passing this on for what it’s worth.’

  ‘And what is it that you want from me, Inspector?’

  Cross raised his eyebrows.

  ‘How can I help you?’ repeated McMahon. ‘I assume we’re trading.’

  McMahon was nobody’s fool.

  ‘Does the name Breen mean anything? He was a Sticky.’

  ‘Stickies I steer clear of.’

  The answer was no surprise. Antipathy between the Officials and Provisionals had been permanent since the 1970 split.

  ‘Someone tried to kill him a few years ago with a car bomb, and we have to put the Provisional IRA near the top of the list.’

  ‘The name of the Provisional IRA is used to cover a multitude of sins, you know that. If we’d been responsible for every bombing we’ve been blamed for . . . This Breen, is he your man in the road?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I asked around about him. Not a whisper. Are you saying someone caught up with him?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I don’t know whether his death was the pay-off of the earlier attempt or something else. What about the name Heatherington?’

  McMahon looked at Cross with narrowed eyes. ‘What exactly is it you’re investigating?’

  ‘Heatherington’s name came up.’

  McMahon shrugged. ‘He’s long dead.’

  Cross nodded.

  ‘Shot for collaborating with the security forces,’ McMahon said brusquely, and Cross sensed him withdrawing.

  ‘Why was he shot?’ he asked.

  ‘I just told you.’

  McMahon finished his tea.

  ‘Yes, but what did he do?’ asked Cross, seeing time was running out.

  ‘He told us a pack of lies.’

  ‘About Tommy Herron?’

  ‘No. He told us the truth about Herron, and about Dublin. The lies came after.’

  McMahon stood up. The interview was over. ‘Finish your tea, Inspector.’

  They walked in awkward silence to the hospital reception, with the bodyguard two paces behind.

  ‘What about pornography?’ Cross asked as they reached the lobby.

  ‘I’ve no use for it myself,’ McMahon said facetiously.

  ‘A man told me there’s more of it about. And drugs.’

  McMahon shrugged. They reached the lift and while they waited McMahon leaned towards Cross, fixing him with his stare, and spoke so no one could overhear.

  ‘Two things make a man greedy. Pornography and drugs. They’re difficult to control and they’re too easy to fall out over. Now, I’m going this way.’

  He disappeared into the lift, followed by his man, leaving Cross with the feeling that he had been told nothing.


  29

  DEIDRE returned from Brussels with Belgian chocolates for the children. She looked well, Cross thought, and well fucked, which was more than he could say for himself. They resumed their egg-shell lives.

  At work the bureaucratic machine ground its inexorable way, impervious to any string-pulling on Cross’s part. Forensic would take its own sweet time getting round to inspecting Willcox’s lock-up. A backlog of work meant several days at least, he was primly told, before anything could be done.

  Breen’s contracting company turned out to be one of several firms he had been involved in. Questioning of employees revealed that he had been conspicuous by his absence, working at the depot only a morning or so a week and spending most of that time closeted with an accountant. The accountant no longer worked for the firm and it took Westerby several days to trace him.

  She found him in a flat off the Malone Road and her first thought when Patrick Rintoul opened the door was that he was a sick man. Rintoul was waxy pale and emaciated, and had about him an aura of profound resignation rarely seen outside the terminal ward.

  He apologized for being so hard to find. He worked for himself these days, he explained, as he showed her into a tiny kitchen with just enough room for both of them to sit. Even in the littlest things he moved with the ponderous air of a man conserving energy. After making tea he looked in the fridge and apologized for not having milk.

  ‘Black with plenty of sugar. That’s the best way without milk. There might be a slice of lemon somewhere. I’m sorry, I don’t seem to get out much.’

  Westerby, sensing that visitors were rare and that Rintoul needed time, chatted casually until they had finished their tea. He appeared eerily calm and was slow to be drawn. From the window she could see a communal garden that clearly no one cared for, and a line of angry black beeches that cut out most of the light. The view was matched by the weather. There was an oppressive stillness, made more so by a grey dankness that had hung over the city for days. Westerby warmed her hands on her mug of tea, glad to be indoors – June already and the heating still on. She listened to Rintoul explaining how he had stopped working full time because of his health but had kept a few freelance clients. She realized with a shock that he was probably not yet forty. He caught her looking at him.