Collusion jli-2

by Stuart Neville

  When Lennon heard the news of McKenna’s death his first thought had been of Marie and Ellen. He’d considered phoning her, even went as far as punching the number into his mobile, but then he realised he didn’t have a clue what to say. He could ask to speak to his daughter, but he knew Marie would say no. And anyway, what do you say to a child who doesn’t know you?

  It wasn’t for lack of trying on his part. For more than two years after Ellen was born he’d tried to initiate some kind of contact. He’d left her mother while she carried their child. He couldn’t forgive himself for that sin, so had no expectation of anyone else offering absolution, but Ellen was still his child. Marie refused every attempt, every approach. It was nothing more than punishment for his crime, and he knew he deserved it, but Ellen didn’t. He considered going through the courts, forcing Marie to give him access, but he’d seen how the system drove more families apart than it pulled together. Parents used their children as weapons against each other. He wanted no part of that. Eventually he decided it would be better to let the child grow up oblivious to him than make her the centre of a battle that wasn’t of her making.

  Lennon’s own father had abandoned his family, leaving only vague memories of a man who would roar with laughter one minute and strike out in anger the next. He’d gone to America, Lennon’s mother had said, and when he had enough money he would send for his wife and children. Years later, she still had that spark of hope in her eyes every time the postman shoved paper through their door. The letter never came.

  For Lennon, family did not mean warmth and comfort. It meant pain and regret. His family had cut him off for joining the cops; Marie’s family had done the same to her for taking up with him. Blood bonds were so easily severed, surely his child would be happier never having been tied to him in the first place.

  But he never forgot.

  Up until she moved away he had parked once or twice a week on Eglantine Avenue and watched Marie and Ellen come and go. Ellen looked like her mother, at least from a distance. He imagined getting out of his car, approaching them, hunkering down to see Ellen eye to eye, holding her small hand in his.

  But what good could come of that? It would only confuse the child, and Marie would whisk her away from him. She kept that hardness in her well hidden. He’d touched it more than once when they’d been together. It felt like the bones beneath her skin, but colder and sharper. She knew keeping his daughter from him was the only way to punish him for what he’d done. Even if he did go to court and demand access, put Ellen through that circus, what kind of father could he make? No better than his own, certainly.

  He shook the thought away and started reading again.

  —all over the fucking place. Everybody knows there was more to all that. But it was forgotten about bloody quick.

  JM: Jesus, you boys must gossip like a bunch of auld dolls at the bingo. None of that’s anything to do with you.

  AR: Nothing to do with me? I’m losing a fucking fortune cause Michael McKenna went and got himself—

  Half a page missing this time. Lennon scanned down.

  —irl. And she’s not been seen since.

  He stopped there, his mouth dry. He traced the blacked-out lines with his finger, looking for any sign of the letters they concealed. That last word, was it girl? He tried to find some moisture in his mouth to wet his lips, but his tongue rasped against the roof of his mouth.

  Lennon pushed the papers aside and checked his watch. Almost lunchtime. He lifted the phone and dialled the C3 office. He asked for Hewitt.

  ‘You fancy some lunch?’ he asked when Hewitt answered.

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lennon said. ‘With me.’

  ‘I gave you the files, Jack. That’s more than I should’ve done.’

  ‘Come on, for old times’ sake.’

  ‘Christ,’ Hewitt said. ‘What are you after?’

  ‘Just a couple of questions. And a bacon sandwich.’

  Hewitt sighed. ‘All right, canteen in ten minutes.’

  Hewitt picked over a salad while Lennon chewed cold bacon. The folder lay on the table between them. A squad of boys from the Tactical Support Group sat on the other side of the canteen, shouting and guffawing over their chips and beans. There must have been a raid planned for the afternoon, some house with reinforced doors and heated rooms for the cannabis plants, or a corner shop with smuggled cigarettes stashed in the back.

  ‘You weren’t joking about the redactions,’ Lennon said. ‘Most of it was blacked out.’

  Hewitt took a sip of mineral water. ‘What did you expect? You’re lucky you saw any of it.’

  Lennon spooned sugar into his tea. ‘I know. There’s only the one bit I’m curious about.’

  ‘Don’t even bother asking,’ Hewitt said.

  ‘Just this one bit.’ Lennon took a swig of lukewarm tea. ‘About that business with Michael McKenna, the feud, McGinty getting ambushed near Middletown.’

  ‘What about it? Everything was made public after the inquiry. McGinty’s faction fought amongst themselves, and the dissidents got involved. It was a bloody mess, but it’s all over with.’

  Lennon struggled with the bacon. Hewitt waited patiently. Eventually, Lennon swallowed and asked, ‘Then why’s it all blacked out? Why the secrecy if it’s all in the public domain anyway?’

  Hewitt put down his fork and wiped his lips with a napkin, even though his mouth was clean. ‘Look, Jack, I let you see those notes as a favour. I’d be in trouble if anyone knew I’d let you get anywhere near them. Don’t push your luck.’

  You heard about Kevin Malloy? What happened to him night before last?’ Lennon asked. ‘He was one of Bull O’Kane’s crew. Bull O’Kane owns the farm where McGinty got killed.’

  ‘That Malloy thing was a robbery gone wrong,’ Hewitt said. ‘Besides, it’s nothing to do with us. It was on the other side of the border. The Guards can take care of that one. You’re fishing. What for?’

  Lennon took a chance. ‘What do the notes say about Marie McKenna?’

  Hewitt paled.

  ‘In the Rankin interview,’ Lennon continued, not giving Hewitt a chance to sidestep. ‘Right at the end, he mentions her.’

  ‘No he doesn’t,’ Hewitt said with a weak laugh. He picked up his fork and stabbed at soggy lettuce leaves.

  ‘He does,’ Lennon said. ‘Right at the end.’

  Hewitt dropped the fork and reached for the folder. He pulled out loose pages and flipped through them. He found the Rankin interview and traced the lines with his fingertip. After a few seconds of page turning, Hewitt said, ‘It doesn’t mention Marie McKenna anywhere.’

  ‘Nope,’ Lennon said. ‘Made you look, though, didn’t I?’

  Hewitt stared hard across the table at him, his cheeks flushed, before stuffing the pages back in the folder. ‘I’ll hang on to these,’ he said, ‘make sure they’re properly disposed of.’

  Was Marie involved in any of that?’ Lennon asked.

  Hewitt stood. ‘I’m not having this discussion with you, Jack.’

  ‘I drive by her street sometimes,’ Lennon said. ‘Not in a dodgy way, you understand, just if I’m passing. Her windows have been boarded up for a while now. I asked around, at her work, places like that. They said she’d moved away, they didn’t know where. She went in a hurry.’

  Hewitt moved around the table to Lennon’s side. ‘Jack, if you want any more information from our files, you can make an official request.’

  ‘She moved away with my daughter,’ Lennon said. ‘You know my family disowned me when I joined up. Personnel have my next of kin down as a cousin I only talk to once a year, for Christ’s sake. Ellen’s the only mark I made on the world. The only family I’ve got, and she doesn’t know who I am. I just want to know where she is.’

  ‘All right.’ Hewitt placed a hand on Lennon’s shoulder. ‘I’ll tell you this as an old friend. I shouldn’t discuss it at all, but I’ll make an exception for you.’ He leaned in close to Lennon’s
ear. ‘These papers say absolutely nothing about Marie McKenna or her child. Fair enough?’

  Lennon turned his head so their eyes were inches apart. ‘Fair enough.’

  Hewitt patted his shoulder and walked away, the file tucked under his arm.

  ‘But, Dan?’ Lennon called after him.

  Hewitt stopped, sighed, and turned around.

  ‘If you’re lying to me,’ Lennon said.

  ‘You’ll what?’

  Lennon thought about it for a few seconds before telling the truth. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  13

  Gerry Fegan stood still and closed his eyes when the long Cadillac slowed alongside him. He’d been as careful as he could, getting off the F Train at Delancey Street station instead of East Broadway, and taking the most circuitous route he could find to his building on the corner of Hester and Ludlow Street. He would have fled when he had the chance, only he needed money and his fake passport. He had no choice but to go back to his shabby little room on the Lower East Side.

  The brakes whined. ‘Doyles want to see you, Gerry Fegan,’ a heavily accented voice called.

  Fegan opened his eyes and turned to Pyè Préval. He was the only black man the Doyle brothers would have about them. The small and wiry Haitian leaned out of the rear passenger side window. Fegan had met him a few times on the sites he’d worked on. In his strange mix of Haitian Creole and English, Pyè often told Fegan he wanted to visit Ireland. He asked Fegan about the weather and the landscape, the drink, and the ‘fi’ – the girls. Fegan liked him in a way, but knew a bad man when he met one. Pyè would be handy with a knife, Fegan was sure of it.

  Pyè got out of the car and held the door open. ‘Zanmi mwen,’ he said, his smile as bright as the day. He pointed inside the limo. ‘My friend, get in machin nan.’

  ‘Jimmy Stone’s going to need surgery on that knee,’ Frankie Doyle said. He speared a meatball with his fork and squashed overcooked pasta into it with his knife.

  The tourists on Mulberry Street paid no attention to Fegan or the Doyles as they talked at a table outside the restaurant. The brothers didn’t offer Fegan any food.

  ‘Tell him I’m sorry about that,’ Fegan said.

  Packie Doyle snorted and mopped his mouth with a paper napkin. ‘Christ, I don’t think sorry’s going to do it, Gerry.’

  Fegan didn’t protest at the name. ‘Will he be all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Eventually,’ Frankie said. ‘He’ll be on crutches for a month or two, and he’ll have a limp for a good long while. Some of the boys thought we should do you over for that, Gerry. Do both your knees, see how you like it.’

  Fegan said nothing. An image flickered briefly in his mind: breaking a young man’s left knee behind McKenna’s bar on the Springfield Road. It had been more than two decades ago, and remembrance could do no good. He pushed the memory away.

  Packie mopped up sauce with a fistful of bread. ‘We don’t want a fight with you, Gerry,’ he said.

  ‘No fight,’ Frankie said. ‘Jesus, if we wanted that, we wouldn’t be sitting here now. We could just as easy turn you in to the cops, or immigration even, as hand you over to this guy who’s looking for you.’

  ‘We could’ve done that,’ Packie said through a mouthful of bread, ‘but we didn’t.’

  ‘Look at things our way for a minute,’ Frankie said. ‘Good men are hard to find.’

  ‘You can’t get the help these days,’ Packie said.

  ‘So along comes a good man,’ Frankie said, ‘and we want to put some work his way.’

  ‘But he throws it back in our face,’ Packie said.

  ‘And we’re just trying to do him a good turn,’ Frankie said. ‘You see where we’re coming from, Gerry?’

  Fegan clasped his hands together. ‘I just want to be left alone.’

  ‘We all want a quiet life,’ Packie said.

  Frankie nodded. ‘What we want and what we get are two different things.’

  You owe us, Gerry,’ Packie said. ‘And not just for keeping quiet about who and where you are.’

  ‘Jimmy’s surgery won’t be cheap,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Thousands, it’ll cost,’ Packie said.

  ‘There’s no getting round it, Gerry,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Everybody pays,’ Packie said.

  ‘Sooner or later,’ Frankie said.

  Fegan eyed the bottle of red wine the brothers shared. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.

  14

  Lennon watched Marie McKenna’s flat for an hour, his mind working over the documents Hewitt had let him see. The windows were still boarded up, no outward sign that anything had changed since May. He often scolded himself as he sat there, parked wherever the best vantage point lay. This was stalker behaviour, plain and simple, and he hated himself for it.

  Worst of all, the one night he could have done any good, he hadn’t been there. Just a day before Marie disappeared, Lennon sat in this very parking space and watched a tall thin man call at her door. When she welcomed the stranger in, Lennon had sped off, almost clipping another car. The next day he found out the man was Gerry Fegan, a known killer. Fegan had been arrested for brawling with another thug outside the flat.

  Lennon asked CI Uprichard what was going on. Uprichard made a call while Lennon waited, nodded his head and grunted agreement. When Uprichard hung up, he paused, smiled and said, ‘Best just leave it.’

  But Lennon didn’t leave it, at least not for a while. He asked around, begged favours, and leaned on lowlifes. All he could get was that she’d moved away in a hurry, taking the little girl with her.

  His little girl.

  He had put it to the back of his mind, convinced himself his daughter was lost to him, but still once every week or two he would take a detour by Eglantine Avenue. Like this evening.

  The window above Marie’s flat lit up. A young man with a rollup cigarette between his lips appeared for just a moment as he lowered the shabby blinds. An idea presented itself. Lennon pushed it away. The idea resisted. He gave in, knowing it was a mistake.

  Lennon climbed out of his Audi, locked it, and walked towards the flat. There were three doorbell buttons. The bottom one, the button for Marie’s flat, had no name tag. The middle one said ‘Hutchence’. Lennon held his thumb on it for five seconds, then took a step back.

  The middle blind on the bay window shot up, followed by the sash pane. The young man leaned out. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Police,’ Lennon said. ‘I need a word.’

  The young man banged his head on the window frame as he ducked back inside. Lennon heard the frantic muttering of at least three voices from above. He guessed it wasn’t tobacco the young man was smoking.

  The young man’s head appeared again. ‘Can I see some identification please?’ he asked, his voice breaking like a twelve-year-old’s.

  ‘If you like,’ Lennon said. He pulled his wallet from his hip pocket, opened it, and held it up. ‘I doubt if you’ll be able to read it from up there, though.’

  ‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ the young man said, the last word at least an octave higher than the rest.

  Lennon scanned the tiny garden as he waited. Marie used to keep it pretty neat. Now litter and dead leaves gathered in the corners, and a summer’s worth of weeds had grown up through the cracks in the concrete.

  A light appeared in the glass above the front door. Lennon put on his best scary cop face, ready to put the wind up the youngster. The door opened. He held his identification up at the kid’s eye level. There was no sound but the flushing of a toilet somewhere upstairs.

  Eventually the kid smirked and said, ‘John Lennon? Was Ringo busy?’

  Lennon gave the boy his hardest stare. ‘Detective Inspector John Lennon. My friends call me Jack. You can call me Inspector Lennon. Understood?’

  The kid’s smirk dropped. ‘Understood.’

  ‘Is your name Hutchence?’

  Yes.’

&
nbsp; ‘First name?’

  ‘David.’

  ‘What are you, a student?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At Queen’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You having a party, David?’

  ‘No!’ The young man held his hands up. ‘It’s just me and my flatmates. We weren’t making any noise. We’ve no music going or anything.’

  Lennon leaned forward and sniffed the air between him and the kid. ‘You been smoking anything?’

  ‘Just fags.’ The young man forced his shaking hands together as the toilet flushed again.

  Lennon stepped into the hall. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Just a couple of weeks,’ the kid said as shuffled backwards. ‘Term only starts on Monday.’

  Lennon walked past the young man and peered up the stairwell. Another kid’s head ducked out of sight on the landing above. A flatmate, presumably. ‘Who lives on the top floor?’ Lennon asked.

  ‘No one yet. The landlord said there’s more students moving in next week.’

  Lennon pointed to the door in the hallway beyond. It had been six years since he’d left the ground floor flat, and that life, behind. ‘What about in there?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s empty too,’ the kid said. ‘The landlord said someone rents it, but they’re away travelling or something.’

  Lennon tried the door handle. It was locked, of course. ‘Is there ever anyone around?’

  ‘No, there’s… oh, wait!’ The young man’s face lit up like he’d won a prize. ‘Someone picked up the post last week. There was a pile sitting there.’ He indicated the shelf above the radiator. ‘We went out one night, and when we came back, it was gone. Do you want the landlord’s number?’

  No,’ Lennon said. He’d tackled the landlord not long after the flat had been boarded up and come away with nothing. He handed the kid a card. ‘If anyone ever comes around, goes in there, takes anything away, anything at all, you give me a call, all right? And I’ll pretend I didn’t smell anything funny coming from upstairs.’