by Matt McGuire
He remembered the Peace Agreement like it was yesterday. He’d been in Musgrave Street at the time of the prisoner release, standing in the canteen, watching the news. The whole room stopped, cops shaking their heads in utter disbelief. They watched as some of the most dangerous men in the country just walked out of jail. The TV showed a crowd, the pumping of fists, heads ducking into waiting cars. Ward knew all the faces, all the names. In the corner of the canteen someone in uniform puked in a bin.
The next thing, the politicians disbanded the force. Sayonara RUC. They took the name, the badge, the uniform. Ward had seen friends killed in that uniform and suddenly they had to give it up, like it was no big deal. Half the force walked away, men with fifteen years’ service, some with more. They’d been sold out, stabbed in the back. Words like ‘honour’, ‘loyalty’ and ‘service’ seemed offensive, like someone taking the piss out of you.
Ward watched as Wilson and the bureaucrats took over. And now the new recruits, all wide eyed and bushy tailed. He didn’t blame them, just young guys looking for jobs. He’d stayed on though, refusing early retirement and the golden handshake. It felt like blood money, like you were being bought off.
Ward put his hand on the desk drawer and hesitated.
He thought about Tomb Street, picturing the injuries, imagining what it must have taken to ruin someone’s face like that. If the police had changed, so had the world. People were different, meaner, nastier, like they’d grown accustomed to the violence and there was no going back.
He’d been in custody before, checking the tail end of last night’s carnage. They had a sixteen-year-old in on Attempted Murder, stabbed someone outside an off licence. The reason –
‘Slagged my trainers, so he did.’
The week before it was sexual assault, victim in her seventies, a grandmother. On Thursday, it was a young fella on the Dublin Road, in a coma in the Royal, and all for his mobile phone.
In the corner of the office the portable TV was on with picture, but no sound. Ward had watched the news, wanting to see the press statement about Tomb Street and the appeal for information. An ad came on from the Northern Ireland tourist board. A young couple, blonde and beautiful, on the Giant’s Causeway, smiling out to sea. It was all blue skies and sunshine, the whole nine yards. They twirled at a ceilidh, sipped Guinness in the Crown, played golf at Portrush. Ward reached for the remote and killed the clichés.
He sighed and pulled open the drawer. Inside were eight envelopes, pastel pink. He took the top one, holding it in his hands, like he was weighing it.
Detective Inspector Jack Ward
c/o Musgrave Police Station
60 Victoria Street
Belfast
BT1 3GL
They’d even put the postcode on. It was the same each week, every Friday there was another one. Ward reached inside, pulled out the card. Flowers adorned the front, a bunch of roses in faded pastel colours. ‘With Deepest Sympathy’ in looping, elegant lettering. He opened the card, examining the neat cursive handwriting:
In Loving Memory of Jack Ward. May He Rest in Peace.
The eighth one in as many weeks. Same card, same message, same implicit threat. He’d laughed it off at first, telling himself it was some arsehole, trying to be funny.
Then the second card arrived, and the third, and the fourth …
Ward took a drink of coffee. Whoever it was, they were methodical – one a week, every week, and always Friday. They weren’t in a hurry either. And then there was the handwriting. They could have typed it, written in bold, but it was like they were teasing him, egging him on, looking for a chase.
He hadn’t told anyone, knowing he’d be mothballed if word got out. Wilson would jump all over it, chain him to a desk, any old excuse. Ward knew it would be a waste of time. If someone was going to come for him, the last place they’d do it would be at work. No, they’d get him at home, or driving somewhere. You’d be stopped at the lights. A car would pull up, the window down, the passenger leaning out.
Ward stood from his desk and walked to the filing cabinet. His old notebooks were locked in the bottom drawer. He took them out, setting the pile on his desk and started to read. The past came flooding back to him, the names, the jobs. He took his time and made a list.
An hour later and some cross checking, there were six contenders – Michael Hannah, Barry McKeown, Billy Reid, Sam McAttackney, Gerry McCann, Peter McGinn.
Ward knew them all, had sat in interview rooms feeling the hatred across the table. They’d all been involved, all killed people, all of them with reason to come after him.
The phone rang on his desk.
‘DI Ward.’
‘So you’re not in church then?’
He recognized the voice instantly. Pat Kennedy, his old DI from Special Branch. Kennedy had been retired five years but still kept in touch. They met for lunch occasionally, the odd pint.
‘Church?’ Ward said. ‘I think it’s too late for me.’
‘Don’t sweat it, son. I spoke to God. Told him how it was. We’re gonna work something out.’
Ward laughed.
‘So tell me about Tomb Street?’ Kennedy demanded.
‘You joined up again?’
‘Come on now. Don’t have me to come down there.’
‘Hang on a second,’ Ward said, laughing, ‘I’m about to go through a tunnel here …’
Kennedy sensed the brush off. ‘All right then. I get it. Anyway, this lunch you owe me. It’s my birthday tomorrow. We’re going somewhere classy.’
‘I can’t,’ Ward said. ‘I’m taking my other boyfriend out.’
Kennedy snorted.
It was the same every month. They went for lunch, somewhere quiet and out of the way. Ward spoke, Kennedy listened. You could see he missed it – the people, the peelers, the whole shouting match.
‘Pick me up at noon then,’ Ward said.
‘Dead on. And you better have some good chat. I don’t want no shoplifters you hear, no bag snatching.’
Ward laughed. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
He hung up and turned back to the cards, wondering what Pat would say. There was a knock at the door. He put the cards away and closed the drawer.
‘Come in.’
O’Neill appeared, a folder under his arm.
‘Sit down,’ Ward ordered. ‘Tomb Street … talk.’
‘Victim’s Jonathan McCarthy. Twenty-five years old. Trainee solicitor at a firm in town.’
‘Where did he live?’
‘Bell Towers, the new apartment complex at the top of the Ormeau Road.’
‘Home address?’
‘Outside Lisburn.’
‘Family?’
O’Neill looked at his notes. ‘Parents Richard and Ann. Father’s an ex-rugby international, played for Ireland, in the property business now. Worth serious dough, owns a string of mortgage shops, the housing boom.’
He passed an article from a Sunday supplement he’d pulled off the internet. The photos showed the McCarthys’ house, a six-bed mansion complete with stables and four acres. The father spoke about the property market.
‘“… the North’s destiny”,’ Ward read aloud, ‘“payback for all those years of hardship.”’
He smiled at the middle-class propaganda. ‘How’s the property market up the Falls these days? Or the Shankill? Any millionaires there?’ He handed the article back to O’Neill. ‘You speak to the parents?’
‘Uniform woke them, four in the morning, a hat-in-hand job.’
Ward looked at his watch. ‘Let’s go then.’
‘I need to step out for half an hour.’
‘Right. Get me when you’re ready.’
O’Neill nodded and left the office.
When he was gone Ward opened the drawer and took out the cards, tossing them on the desk.
FOUR
O’Neill left Musgrave Street, heading for Tivoli Gardens, the place he’d bought with Catherine the year Sarah was born. He must hav
e driven the Cave Hill Road a thousand times and watched as familiar objects rolled by – the Water Works, Westland fire station, the old dentist’s. For a moment he forgot the last year, everything that had happened, and felt like he was driving home at the end of a shift.
At the house he knocked and waited, feeling unwelcome, like a Mormon minus the name badge and the boyish good looks. He heard Sarah bounding down the hall. The door opened and she leaped into him.
‘Daddy, Daddy, you’re early!’
O’Neill lifted her, feeling her arms wrap round his neck.
Sarah was breathless. ‘The film’s at three so before that we could go to the park or maybe bowling or maybe swimming or maybe—’
‘Wow wow. Hold up there.’ O’Neill set his daughter down and took a knee, brushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘Listen, love, I’m really sorry.’
Her eyes, confused.
‘Something bad happened last night. Daddy has to go to back to work. We’re going to have to go to the pictures another day.’
He watched her face fall and the lower lip tremble. Her eyes started to fill. O’Neill waited, putting a hand on her shoulder.
‘I promise, next time, you can have the biggest carton of popcorn they sell and an ice cream and a Coke.’ He leaned in, voice lowered. ‘Just don’t tell your mummy, all right? We’ll even sit in the front row. How’s that sound?’
Sarah nodded slowly. ‘What happened?’
O’Neill pictured Tomb Street, the young fella, his head caved in. He took a breath.
‘Is there a bad man?’
‘That’s right, darling.’
‘Did he hurt someone?’
‘Aye.’
‘Are you going to get him?’
‘That’s right, love,’ he said, liking the child’s logic and how straightforward it made the world.
‘OK,’ Sarah said, wiping her eye with a small, bunched fist.
O’Neill heard footsteps on the stairs and saw legs, torso then a face. Catherine still had that swimmer’s build, the long limbs, the square shoulders. O’Neill looked at her, feeling something stir in him, remembering when they first went out and couldn’t sleep in the same bed without first having sex. It was like an addiction or something, an itch that they both had to scratch.
Catherine took one look at O’Neill’s suit and guessed the rest.
‘Inside,’ she snapped at Sarah.
‘Its OK, Mummy. There’s a bad man … Daddy …’
‘I said inside.’
Sarah knew the tone. O’Neill let her go, watching her walk away, her head lowered. He stood up and took a stance, waiting. Catherine gathered herself, pausing until Sarah was out of earshot.
‘Listen,’ O’Neill said. ‘I didn’t want to just phone her. Something’s happened all right. There’s nothing I can do about it. This young fella—’
The door slammed, six inches from his face.
O’Neill closed his eyes, pressing his teeth together, feeling the rage rise. Catherine could go fuck herself. Who did she think she was? Where did she think the maintenance came from every month? Did it grow on a tree, fall from the sky, come down the river in a frigging bubble? Or maybe someone was out there, busting his balls every day, wading through all the shit the city had to offer. Taking every bit of overtime that was going, all so she could live the suburban dream, with her Volkswagen Golf, her Marks & Spencer, her trips to Euro-fucking-Disney.
O’Neill turned his back on the house and marched towards the car.
On the drive back to Musgrave Street he pointed his anger at Tomb Street, running over the scene, planning what he would ask the victim’s parents. He knew what he was doing – the distraction, the avoidance, the burying yourself in someone else’s misery. It was a habit, but it worked, so what could you do?
It was getting on for two and he hadn’t eaten. He pulled into the Esso at Fortwilliam, bought a sandwich and grabbed a Sunday Life. In the car, he scanned the newspaper. Front page was a footballer who had slept with his teammate’s wife. Page two was a bikini-clad blonde and some crap about Big Brother. Page three carried a picture of an armoured Land Rover, officers in riot gear, a crowd hurling missiles. The paramilitaries had gone underground it said. They were running counterfeit goods, the drugs trade, sex trafficking. There was armed robbery, tiger kidnapping, targeted car thefts. The strapline read ‘NORTHERN IRELAND: GONE TO THE DOGS’.
‘Tell us something we don’t know.’
The story finished on the Northern Bank robbery. Masked men had held the manager’s family hostage, while he went to work and emptied the vault. They got £25 million, the largest bank job in British history. So far the police had nothing.
O’Neill took a bite of the sandwich, tomato and cheese, soggy and tasteless. He tossed it on the passenger seat and lit a cigarette, before starting the engine and heading back to Musgrave Street.
In the car park O’Neill rang Ward, told him he was downstairs. They were heading out to talk to the McCarthy parents.
He got out and leaned against the car, watching a Land Rover rumble through the armoured gates and park up. The back doors opened and a female peeler dropped down. O’Neill saw the blonde hair and the one-inch ponytail and instinctively straightened up.
He’d been at police college with Sam Jennings in the nineties. They’d become mates, or more than that, mates with potential. They’d got together a couple of times last year, right after Catherine left. He had thought things were going well. Two weeks in, she’d stopped returning his calls. There was silence, then a text message – ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’ O’Neill had left a message, then another, then given up. He figured she’d had her reasons.
They’d dodged each other for months, barely speaking and then only work chat and always with others around.
He watched her cross the car park, talking to her partner Brian Stout.
Sam looked up and saw him as they approached. ‘You go on, Brian. I’ll catch up.’
Stout kept walking, sliding his key card and disappearing through the heavy station door.
Sam turned to him. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Fine. You?’
‘Fine. I heard about Tomb Street.’
‘Yeah. We’re going to see the parents.’
She nodded and a silence fell between them.
‘Listen, John … I need to apologize … about last …’
He shook his head. ‘It’s fine.’
‘No, it’s not. Look I want to …’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
She paused, realizing it was no use, not here anyway. ‘How have you been anyway?’ she asked.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Busy.’
‘Yeah.’
O’Neill looked at her, fighting the urge to ask what had happened, where she went, what she’d been playing at. He held back, worried about giving her the leftovers from the door slamming an hour earlier.
Behind them the station door opened. Ward came out, looking haggard and browbeaten. He squinted at the light, walking towards O’Neill.
Sam put her head down. ‘I’ve gotta go,’ she said, ‘Sir-ing’ Ward as she passed.
The DI opened the car door and lowered himself in. O’Neill got in, expecting a comment, a raised eyebrow, a knowing nod. The DI slumped into the seat and looked straight ahead.
‘Let’s go.’
They drove out the M1, tracking Milltown Cemetery which ran parallel to the motorway. It skirted the Falls Road and Andy-Town, what the cops called ‘Comanche country’.
The rain had started to thin, weakening to a drizzle. In the car neither man spoke. O’Neill thought about Tomb Street, forming questions, angles, hypotheses. Ward was thinking about the sympathy cards, going over names, remembering faces. There were men out there, men he’d locked up, men with memories. He gazed across the traffic to the headstones of Milltown. There were neat rows of polished granite, mostly black, a few greys, the occasional white. Ward’s eyes narrowed. Half the Belfast Brigade were in there,
hardened Provos – Joe Hughes, Michael Tomalty, all the boys. Killed on active duty, fighting for the cause, Ireland’s heroes. Ward snorted, remembering the poem from school. It was Sassoon or Owen, one of them – ‘Dulce et Decorum est’. He thought about the dead men, about their families and old comrades. Were they still out there, nursing old wounds, brooding over scores that needed settled?
After ten minutes O’Neill signalled and turned off the motorway. He drove through Lisburn, following the one-way system. On the far side, the houses thinned and after a while they were in rolling farmland.
O’Neill slowed when he saw the house number and turned up a long drive. The road wound through an acre of neatly mown grass, dotted with saplings. He parked before a large villa with steps to the door, a wraparound porch, mock Doric columns.
‘How the other half live,’ Ward said, pulling the door handle.
To the right of the house was a paddock where a woman in her fifties was trotting astride a tall brown mare. She kept her head down, concentrating, like she was shutting out the world.
O’Neill figured it was the mother.
After another lap she sat up and the horse slowed. She got out of the saddle and made her way to the fence and the two cops. She was ageing well and wearing a dark green Barbour jacket and tanned jodhpurs. The horse followed her over, staring at them, its black eyes like snooker balls. The woman looked exhausted, like the lights were on, but nobody was home.
‘Mrs McCarthy. I’m DS O’Neill; this is DI Ward. We’re from Musgrave Street.’
She gave a nod. ‘Richard’s in the house, I’ll take you in.’
The kitchen was a large open space, floor-to-ceiling glass, views across fields. On the dining table were photographs, taken from a shoebox, pawed over then abandoned. O’Neill glanced as they passed – a teenage boy, good-looking, in school uniform. He did a double take, barely recognizing the victim’s face.
