by Matt McGuire
‘Why?’
‘You’ve been summoned,’ she said, pointing upwards, to the third floor, to the Chief Inspector.
Ward gave a wry smile. ‘Must be doing something right.’
He made his way to CID, thinking the lecture could wait. Word would have gotten back, from the traffic cop to Hugh Rafferty to Wilson. It would be the usual bullshit – jurisdictions, procedures, protocols. Ward had heard it a million times. Now though it was about Pat Kennedy, which only made him less inclined to listen.
In his office, Ward put two spoons of coffee in a mug and filled it from the kettle. He kept seeing Pat’s car, the Saab, wrapped round the tree. He thought about Eileen’s face, her bloodshot eyes, her head shaking in utter disbelief. Ward took the envelope she’d given him out of his pocket and poured the pieces of pink card on to his desk. He moved them round, rearranging them, like a child with a jigsaw. He was four bits short but when he’d finished it didn’t matter. Ward opened the drawer and took out one of the cards he’d been sent and laid it alongside. The flowers, the message, the handwriting: they were all the same. He sipped his coffee, staring at the unfinished mosaic. He thought about the George and McCann, sitting there, all smug. ‘How’s Pat Kennedy? … And Davy Price? … Bet you miss it …’
Ward felt his chest tighten. He imagined himself with McCann, in an interview room, the door locked. It would be like the old days, seven days detention, no solicitors, no lawyers. These people didn’t deserve due process. They murdered cops, shot them in their beds, at the dinner table, walking the dog. He pictured Pat Kennedy in the Saab, flying down country roads, seventy miles an hour. He saw the other car behind him, black ski masks, guns ready. Then the bump from behind, the bend in the road, the car up on the verge.
The telephone rang, snapping him back to the present. He recognized Wilson’s extension. The Chief would have been watching the car park, would have seen him drive in.
‘DI Ward.’
‘In my office, Detective.’
‘On my way.’
The third floor was quiet, free from the noise of the cop shop, prisoners swearing at police, police swearing back. It smelled less institutional, more polished, less disinfected. It could be any other civil service department, a procession of grey-haired suits, shuffling paperwork behind closed doors.
Ward approached Wilson’s office. There were voices inside, the chumminess of the golf club. He knocked and waiting through the customary pause. After a few seconds a voice ushered him in.
Wilson was at his desk. To the side sat Arthur Johnson, the Chief Super of B Division. He was a big man, six foot two, sixteen stone. Johnson was fifty-nine, a career cop from Yorkshire, chasing the big bucks in the PSNI. He’d eyes to be the next Chief Constable and was busy shaking hands, making friends, greasing the wheel. Johnson was in uniform, all shined up, like the first day at school. Ward knew the game. Wilson would want to crack the whip, show the Super he ran a tight ship, that he’d be useful in the future.
‘DI Ward, come in,’ Wilson said. ‘The Super was just passing and thought he’d drop in and say hello.’
My hole, Ward thought, taking a seat.
‘Do you know why I wanted to see you, Detective?’ Wilson, the headmaster.
‘Promotion?’ Ward said, face deadpan.
The other men laughed.
‘Not quite, Jack. I got a call from Chief Inspector Hugh Rafferty up in Ballymena yesterday. He says you were up working the scene of a road traffic accident outside Dunloy. Last time I checked CID didn’t do RTAs. And they didn’t do them sixty miles away on the B roads of north Antrim. But maybe I’m mistaken …’
Wilson let it hang.
‘It was Pat Kennedy.’
‘I know who it was.’
‘I’m not sure you do,’ he said, adding ‘sir’ as an after thought. Wilson knew Kennedy and Ward had been Branch men. Kennedy was a dinosaur, another one who liked to blur the lines, who didn’t differentiate between enforcing the law and making it up as you went along.
‘I know you worked together—’
‘Pat Kennedy locked up half the Belfast Brigade: Joe Lynch, Peter Hughes, Tommy Costello.’ Ward was heating up.
‘I don’t need a history lesson, Detective.’
‘Are you sure? Because last time I checked—’
‘That’s enough, Jack,’ the Super said, stepping in. ‘Pat Kennedy was a hell of a peeler. No one’s doubting that. The issue is you, acting like you own the place, like it’s all about you, every crime scene, every job.’
Ward listened, his eyes on Wilson.
‘We’ve got people on Kennedy’s accident. Cars go off the road, they skid out, they hit trees. If you’re stressed and want a break, just ask. Some time away, take yourself off, get your head showered.’
‘Are you suspending me, sir?’
They would have had the conversation.
‘No,’ Johnson said. ‘But you stay away from Kennedy’s accident, you hear?’
Eventually, Ward nodded.
‘There’s one other thing, Jack,’ Johnson said. ‘How close are we on the McCarthy kid?’
‘We’re working it.’
‘Good. Because the father’s got profile. He’s capable of making waves if we don’t get a result. And we could do with all the good headlines we can get.’
‘Sure,’ Ward said, non-committally.
‘What about that kid you were about to charge? Ronan Mullan. Prosecutor got cold feet. Wouldn’t play ball.’
Ward sensed them fishing, looking for O’Neill, trying to catch him with his hand in the till.
‘Evidence wasn’t there,’ he said, talking to Johnson, holding Wilson’s gaze.
‘Right,’ the Super said, sounding convinced.
A silence fell.
‘You can go, Detective,’ Wilson said. ‘And if you happen to find yourself in north Antrim, just know you’ll be collecting your pension from the end of next week.’
Ward nodded and left the room.
He passed Kearney on his way back to CID.
‘Message for you sir, David Price, said he was an old mate.’
Ward looked up. ‘What did he say?’
‘Europa Hotel, an hour. Said you’d know.’
At 11 a.m. Ward was sitting in the front bar of the hotel. The morning traffic crawled along Great Victoria Street. It had been raining all morning and pedestrians ran for cover, heads pulled into jackets, umbrellas at angles. Across the street an open-top bus stopped, disgorging a group of tourists for their obligatory Guinness at the Crown bar.
Ward was surprised at the phone call. Pat had said Davy Price was in Iraq, training the police. A bunch of guys had gone, working as consultants. There were threats from insurgents but it was £500 a day.
‘Fermanagh to Fallujah,’ he’d heard. ‘Same shit, different weather.’
The Europa was empty apart from two guys at the bar. Both were mid-forties, both on pints. They’d watched Ward enter, eyes tracking him as he crossed the room. Ward felt it and sat where he could see them.
Someone had left a Belfast Telegraph on the table and he picked it up, scanning for Tomb Street. The McCarthy story was front page on Monday, page four on Tuesday. Now it was gone, vanished, a distant memory.
Ward tossed the paper aside and thought about the first time he’d met Pat Kennedy. He was in his thirties and had just joined the Branch. Kennedy was a Sergeant and took him out in a car, a maroon Cortina. They’d stopped round the back of the Smithfield on some waste ground that had been turned into a car park.
‘What do you see?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Bunch of cars. Not much happening. Folk coming back, driving off.’ He wondered what he was supposed to be looking at.
‘That it?’
Ward hesitated.
‘You see our friends?’ Kennedy said.
Ward peered out, not speaking.
‘Behind,’ Pat said.
He looked in the mirror. A blue Sierra with two men, long hair,
beards. They were scoping the place, pretending they weren’t.
‘What are they doing?’
‘Watching.’
‘Watching what?’
‘That building.’
‘Why?’
Ward paused. ‘I dunno,’ he said, annoyed at himself.
‘That’s right. So what you thinking?’
Ward hesitated, ‘Em …’
Kennedy laughed.
‘How about, do we know them? Could you ID them again? How are they acting? What time is it? How long they been here? What’s the registration? Is the car stolen? Should we stop them? Should we follow them? Do we need backup?’
Ward looked at the two men. They looked like Provos, slouched in the car, lying low, waiting.
‘Start the car,’ Kennedy said. ‘Pull up alongside.’
‘You serious?’
Two cops had been shot the month before when they disturbed two Provos on an operation.
‘Do it.’
Ward felt his pulse quicken as the engine spluttered and caught. Surely they needed backup?
Kennedy rolled his window down as they pulled up alongside.
‘Right, girls?’ he said.
‘Evening, sir.’ Both men looking straight ahead.
‘This here’s Jack Ward. He’s new.’ Kennedy nodded at the car. ‘Davy Price and Phil Mulrine.’
The two men nodded; nothing more.
‘Any joy?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Nah.’
‘All right. Keep her lit.’
Kennedy flicked his finger and Ward drove on, breathing a sigh of relief.
‘Ours then?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. It’s a safe house.’ Kennedy gestured towards a doorway. ‘We think the Provos are using it for weapons.’
Back on the road, Ward relaxed.
‘By the way,’ Kennedy said. ‘Your timing belt needs tightening.’
Sitting in the bar of the Europa, Ward felt himself smile at the memory. The last comment stuck in his head, about the car. It was Kennedy to a T – the detail, the attention.
He thought about the traffic cop the day before, remembering his comment about brake failure – ‘… more common than you’d think’.
He didn’t buy it. It might happen to other folk, but not Pat Kennedy.
Ward clocked Davy Price crossing Great Victoria Street, weaving between cars. He was in his early sixties and still had the walk, all focus, like he’d locked in. Price was bald and looked like Marlon Brando at the end of Apocalypse Now, those same dark eyes, the kind that had seen things and not looked away.
He swept the room as he walked in, clocking the drinkers as he headed for Ward. They shook hands before sitting. Price momentarily ignored Ward, looking at the two men at the bar.
‘Watch,’ he said, voice quiet. ‘Big man leans in, whispers something, mate looks over.’
Ward looked up as they did exactly what Price said.
‘Mates of yours?’
‘Put them in Maghaberry. Six years, eight years.’ Price paused. ‘Yeah, they know me.’
‘Should we be worried?’
Price shook his head, still staring. ‘Nah.’
He kept his eyes on the bar, letting them know he was there, that they could go somewhere else.
‘How’s Iraq?’ Ward asked.
‘Hot.’
‘How long you home?’
‘Few weeks.’
‘You hear about Pat?’
‘Got a call.’
All the while, Price’s eyes on the bar. Ward waited.
‘I spoke to Eileen this morning. She said you’d been up.’
Ward nodded.
‘You go to the scene?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It was no accident.’
Ward kept his counsel, listening. Price looked at the bar.
‘I mean, Pat? Seriously? Loosing control of a car?’ He shook his head. ‘As for something mechanical, the Saab was two years old.’
‘It happens,’ Ward said.
‘Not to Pat Kennedy it doesn’t. You don’t think he’d checked every spark plug himself?’
Ward nodded, conceding.
‘Was he getting sympathy cards?’
Ward looked at him.
‘You too then,’ Price said. ‘I thought so. Pat didn’t tell you though, right?’
‘No. Eileen found one, gave it to me yesterday.’
Price turned to him. ‘They have to be got you know.’
Ward waited.
‘I don’t mean investigated, arrested, charged. It needs to be biblical, Old Testament. There’s no other way.’
Ward felt himself hesitate, reluctant to join a lynch mob. Eileen’s face flashed before him. Did he owe it to her? To himself? He wondered where the questions came from. Was it retirement? The Troubles being over? The idea that that was the past, that they’d moved on? He remembered McCann’s words in the George, about the good old days, when there were sides and you knew who the enemy was and tried to get them before they got you.
Price watched him.
‘Don’t have the stomach for it? Yeah, Pat told me. He rated you, Jack. Said you had it in spades, a natural born peeler.’ Price smiled, remembering. ‘The other thing he said – you didn’t like sticking the knife in, not unless you had to.’
‘We don’t stick the knife in,’ Ward said, as much for himself. ‘That’s for them uns out there. Not us.’
Price smiled. ‘Listen to you. Like butter wouldn’t melt. You forget I’ve been around, Jack, that I know a thing or two.’
Ward waited to see how far he would go.
‘I’m only messing,’ Price said. ‘You seen what the government did to us. Pat was right. You hold the line for thirty years, watch your mates die, your family threatened. Every moment looking over your shoulder, waiting on some wee bastard coming at you out of the dark like a fucking rat. And then what? They sign a Peace Agreement and the government picks you up, wipes their arse with you and tosses you away.’ Price snorted. ‘Some country, eh? You couldn’t make it up.’
Ward listened to his own doubts come back at him like threats.
‘You won’t catch who killed Pat. There’ll be no investigation, no trial, no conviction.’
‘We don’t know he was killed yet.’
‘Wise up, Jack.’
Ward looked out at Great Victoria Street. It was lashing now. Folk huddled in doorways, trying to stay dry, waiting for it to pass. It was normal life, after so many years, when getting soaked was the worst thing you had to worry about. He looked back, feeling Price staring at him.
‘You know who it is, Jack.’
Ward stayed silent.
‘Tell me?’
Ward stared, knowing if he spoke he’d be signing a death warrant. That wasn’t what he wanted. It would be cheating, changing the rules, just because it was difficult, the rewards hard to come by. Price had always pushed the envelope, even by Branch standards. Ward thought about his cancer, wondering if it was back, if he’d nothing to lose.
‘You sick again, Davy?’
‘What if I am?’
Ward shrugged. Price forced a laugh.
‘Look at me, would you? Fit as a fiddle. But this isn’t about me, is it, Jack? It’s about Pat.’
He stared at Ward, not letting up.
‘It’s one of three people. I know that much myself.’ He spoke slowly, his eyes fixed on Ward. ‘Peter Hughes … Joe Fusco … Gerry McCann.’
Ward looked back, eyes blank. After a few seconds he spoke.
‘This isn’t the Wild West. I’m not going to—’
Price stood up, cutting him off. ‘Don’t worry about it Jack. I’ve got what I came for.’
Price walked out of the bar past the two drinkers. It was slow, deliberate, letting them know they weren’t forgotten, that their sins hadn’t been forgiven, not by everyone.
TWENTY TWO
Saturday morning, 10 a.m., Ormeau Park. The sky dark, the trees leafless, the ground wet. O
’Neill was in jeans and jacket, a black hat pulled low, heading for the old Victorian bandstand. The rusted iron and flaking paint spoke of inevitable decline, of former glory, of a bygone era. It was cold out, the park deserted except for the occasional dog walker. Martin Toner had called on Friday and O’Neill had set up the meet.
He took a seat on a bench and looked at his watch. He would do this first, then he had Sarah’s party in the afternoon. O’Neill took a bite from the sausage roll he’d picked up on the way. Near the bandstand a woman stood next to a buggy. She sipped from a polystyrene cup, while two young kids chased each other with sticks.
O’Neill saw Toner approach, recognizing the tracksuit and the familiar slow swagger. The kid looked over his shoulder, one way, the other, before slowing and sitting at the far end of the bench. O’Neill slid a brown paper bag towards him. Marty picked it up, inspecting the sausage.
‘What, no sauce?’
O’Neill laughed quietly.
The two of them sat in silence, watching the kids sword-fighting on the bandstand. O’Neill nodded.
‘Fiver says it ends in tears.’
‘How come?’
‘It always does.’
Marty gave a ‘huh’ and took a bite of his sausage roll. When he’d finished he took out a cigarette and lit up. He took a drag and exhaled, looking at the smouldering point of red ash.
‘So how does it work?’ he said. ‘You want information. Stuff about stash houses, who’s running what, when the gear’s coming …’
O’Neill shook his head.
‘Nah. I’ve informants coming out my ears. You need to do better than that.’
‘Like what?’
O’Neill shrugged. ‘Tell me about Tomb Street. You recognized the photo, Jonathan McCarthy.’
Marty paused, deciding whether to jump.
‘Tierney was looking for him. I saw him at the club, phoned it in.’
O’Neill felt his pulse quicken. He remembered Tierney in the George with Gerry McCann. He wondered how far Tomb Street went? Who it touched? Was McCann involved?
Tierney ran half the dope in South Belfast. The cops knew it, but could never get near him. He was cautious to the point of paranoid. Moved round a lot, never used a phone. O’Neill saw why Marty was scared. There were myths about Tierney, tales of disfigurement, stories about pliers, about fingers being broken, teeth taken out. He’d a pit bull he kept for special occasions.
