by Matt McGuire
A hand grabbed hold of his hair. Molloy punched him in the face – one, two, three. Petesy rocked back, his world exploding.
‘Calm yourself, son. No more chaseys, you hear?’
Petesy lay in the chair, moaning. After a few minutes, he reached up and put a hand to his head. He tried to open his eyes. Objects moved, everything blurred. Someone was opposite him, in his granny’s chair. The other man walked round the living room, picking up objects, inspecting them. He went into the kitchen, before returning and heading for the hall. Petesy heard feet on the stairs.
Molloy got out of his granny’s chair and leaned forward.
‘Where is he?’
Petesy didn’t answer. Molloy slapped him in the face and his lip split. Petesy tried to cower while Molloy waited.
‘I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is he?’
A pause, two seconds, three seconds. Molloy slapped him again and his nose burst. A cascade of blood ran over his mouth and on to his T-shirt.
Molloy laughed, then shook his head. ‘Look at the state of you. You need to understand, we can do this all day. Eventually, you’ll tell us. And you know what you’ll be thinking?’ His voice went deep and dopey. ‘I wish I’d told them two hours ago.’
Molloy laughed at his own joke. He put his hand to his back, groaning as he stood up. Petesy was dazed, half aware, his head pounding. Molloy reached for a dining chair and placed it in front of him. He reached down and straightened Petesy’s leg, putting his foot on the chair, exposing his knee. Molloy looked round the room, trying to find something big, something heavy. He frowned and stepped into the kitchen, rummaging through drawers.
He returned with a rolling pin.
Molloy stood over Petesy’s leg, looking at the knee, shaking his head.
‘You know it’s amazing what the surgeons can do these days.’ He smiled, prodding the knee with the rolling pin. ‘But you know, they can only do it once. Second time round’s a different matter. Then you’re talking wheelchairs.’
Molloy straightened, adjusting his grip, changing his stance. He made a series of practice strokes, trying to figure the best angle.
‘And you need to remember something as well.’ Molloy paused. ‘You’ve got two knees, two ankles, two elbows. We can take our time. One way or the other though we’re going to find out where he is.’
Petesy looked up, face stinging, eyes rolling in his head. There was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. Molloy stood up, rolling pin cocked. He breathed in.
‘Hang fire,’ Tierney said, coming through the doorway.
Molloy exhaled, his face dropping.
Tierney held up Petesy’s mobile. ‘Less mess.’
Molloy looked disappointed, like he’d been told Santa didn’t exist. He crouched down, a few inches from the bloody pulp of Petesy’s face.
‘You’re lucky, son. Do you hear me? Lucky.’
Petesy wasn’t aware of them leaving. It was two hours before his grandmother came home and found him there, sitting in the armchair.
TWENTY NINE
O’Neill had lost the feeling in his lower back. He’d been sitting in the cupboard at Musgrave Street looking at a bank of monitors for three hours. The room was musty and stale. Six screens and no windows, health and safety would have had a field day.
Marty Toner had gone to ground, which left him with a dead body, half a theory and a set of Gerry McCann’s business accounts. The kid had fingered Tierney, but there were a million reasons to doubt him. O’Neill had spent the day reviewing the case file and was now going over the tapes from the club and the street cameras around Tomb Street. It was grainy footage, people turning off Victoria Street, heading for the club. Four hours later, they staggered back out like extras in a low-budget zombie flick.
O’Neill paused the tape as the McCarthy group arrived, checking the time against his notes. He watched the footage inside the club. People clutching drinks, skulling shots – sambuca, tequila, Jäger Bombs. There was no audio. Folk leaned in and shouted silently in each other’s ears. McCarthy and Craig were in the corner with the girls, oscillating between the bar and their table. O’Neill tallied their drinks. McCarthy put away five Becks and three shots in two hours. His flatmate kept pace, so did the girls. He watched Marty Toner arrive at the club after twelve with two other lads. They stayed near the bar, checking out the birds, commenting as they passed. McCarthy sporadically looked at his phone, checking texts, like he was expecting something. O’Neill watched, reminded that they never found his mobile. At 1.25 a.m., McCarthy said something to his flatmate and left the club. The door camera showed him walk between the two bouncers, turn left and vanish out of shot.
O’Neill sighed. It was nothing he didn’t know. After a smoke in the car park he settled into CID and pulled the paperwork. He reread everything – witness statements, autopsy report, interview transcripts. The parents, the flatmate, the friends. He went back to his notes from the scene, looking at the diagram, the position of the body, the distance from the club. In the folder was a list of the other businesses along Tomb Street – post office, electrical wholesaler, digital designers. Kearney had done the follow-up, getting their CCTV, sitting through hours of footage in the hope of seeing something. It was donkey work, box ticking, you did it anyway.
O’Neill stopped and looked at the evidence log. There was something missing. The Cole Agency, a digital design company. There was no record of their CCTV.
He called Kearney on his mobile. They’d tried them three times but got no reply. Kearney had visited the premises last Thursday, but there had been no answer. O’Neill looked up the number and tried again.
‘Digital Design, Nick Cole.’ The voice was English, northern, Geordie maybe.
O’Neill introduced himself, explained about the incident.
‘We’ve been in Munich at an industry show.’
‘No problem. Listen, I was just wondering if you had any CCTV on the premises?’
‘No. We’ve a camera on our door entry system but that’s about it.’
Half an hour later, O’Neill was in Tomb Street. He stood in the door of the design office, looking towards the entry where McCarthy had been found. There was a direct line of sight.
He pressed the intercom and was buzzed up. The offices were minimalist, all white furniture, clean desks and no wires. O’Neill thought about Musgrave Street, the mass of cables and the institutional Formica. The owner was late thirties, dressed in black with a ginger quiff. The man led him to an Apple Mac, where he pulled some high-resolution footage of the door.
‘We do it all through the computer.’
‘Impressive,’ O’Neill said, thinking about the kit they had put on Marty Toner, suddenly embarrassed.
‘You’re saying two weekends ago?’ Cole typed as he spoke.
‘Yeah. Sunday morning, between 1 a.m. and 2.’
An image appeared on the screen – night-time, the doorway, a metre of footpath. You couldn’t see the street, let alone the entry where they’d found McCarthy.
‘You see,’ Cole said. ‘It’s really only a door entry system. We’ve nothing here worth stealing.’
O’Neill sighed and offered his thanks.
‘Hang on,’ Cole said. They watched the footage suddenly come to life. A shape at the bottom of the shot began to move.
‘What the—’ Cole, cut himself short.
A figure had been lying in the doorway, a wino. He got up slowly, looked to be in pain, the bones aching. He stumbled, steadied himself against the wall and made off down the street.
‘Dirty bastard. Sleeping in our doorway.’
O’Neill looked at the tramp – the straggly beard, the pockmarked skin, the filthy complexion. He felt himself smile. ‘Hello, Henry.’
‘You know him?’ Cole said surprised.
‘Everyone knows Henry.’
Henry was Arthur Devine. He got his nickname from Henry Joy McCracken, the Belfast man they hung in Corn Market after the ’98 rebellion. Two hun
dred years later Arthur Devine had tried the same trick. He’d botched it. The police were called to Corn Market, to a homeless guy screaming his head off. The rope had snapped and he broke both ankles. Henry lay screaming for two hours. Folk ignored him, thinking he was one of the local crazies. There was no fixing Henry. Mental illness, alcohol addiction, substance abuse. Where would you even start?
O’Neill went back to Musgrave Street and pulled a file. Henry had a list of offences, mostly Public Order, the odd Criminal Damage. He was forty-two but looked sixty. He’d brown unkempt hair, a long ratted beard and clothes he’d pulled from a skip. He had the classic alkie face – burst blood vessels, swollen nose, scabby lips. In the mugshot his eyes stared out like there was nothing inside. He had been sleeping rough for over a decade and spent whatever money he got pouring Christ knows what down his throat.
Henry was a local celebrity. He’d get pissed and walk the Lisburn Road, abusing folk. Eventually the cops were called. Older officers would stand aside, let the rookies take charge. Henry was a right of passage. He’d stand there, calling them all the names of the day. Eventually they cuffed him. The bracelets would barely click when Henry would hold his breath and his face would turn red. Five seconds, ten seconds, then he’d stop and start smiling.
The smell would suddenly hit and the peelers would jump back.
‘Dirty bastard’s shit himself.’
Older cops stood laughing.
‘Control your suspect, son.’
Later they’d sit over a beer, recounting stories of when they’d each been ‘Henried’.
‘Waited till he was in the back of the wagon on me.’
‘Here. That’s nothing. He put it on his hands with me. Started spreading it over the inside of the car. He tried to get me with it.’
From CID O’Neill did a ring round, calling the hostels to see if anyone had seen Henry. He came up blank but knew a list of spots where he might crash and decided to call it a night.
Seven in the morning, bottle in hand, O’Neill cut across the Botanic Gardens. He left solitary tracks in the early morning dew. To his left, the white ribs of the Victorian glasshouse. To his right, the stone edifice of the Ulster Museum. He’d jumped the wall into the deserted park. Bottles peeked from the top of bins – White Lightning, Merrydown, Buckfast. The Botanics were a favourite of winos and hoods, the undeserving and the unwanted, folk with nowhere to go. A place to count your coppers and commune with your poison in peace. For those with no hostel, the bushes towards the back offered some token cover. It was a place to kip, once the booze had done its job and won you a few hours of blissful annihilation.
O’Neill had a quarter-bottle of Black Bush in his pocket and headed for the back of the Botanics. In the corner, behind a rhododendron he hit the jackpot. He approached quietly, looking for a head among the dirty blankets and old newspapers.
‘Hey, Henry.’
Nothing.
‘Henry.’
Nothing.
O’Neill prodded the shape with his foot.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ it said, eyes closed.
The shape broke into a coughing fit, loose phlegm rattling.
‘Police, Henry.’
Eyes still closed. ‘Definitely go fuck yourself.’
O’Neill stopped prodding. He leaned over the heap, unscrewed the quarter bottle and poured a splash across the cracked lips. The nose twitched, the tongue flicked, a quiet moan.
O’Neill screwed the cap on and left the bottle. He stepped away and lit a cigarette. After a minute, there were a series of groans, then curses, as the shape righted itself. The screw top opened, he heard a slug being taken. There was no gasp, no release, no sense of the whiskey burning.
O’Neill came round and saw Henry slumped, tipping the bottle back. He was talking to himself, the words spilling out in semi-delirium.
‘No surrender. Sláinte. Up the Rah.’
Henry laughed and a hacking cough cut into him like it might kill him. It lasted two minutes, leaving him breathless. A dribble of phlegm hung from his mouth and he wiped it with his sleeve. O’Neill watched him relax as the whiskey did its work. He figured there was a ten-minute window. He was no use sober, too much craving. And he was no use steaming, too much nonsense. You needed him lightly oiled, the tongue loosened.
Henry tipped the bottle, taking a slug, the whiskey half gone.
‘New interrogation technique? If I’d a known I’d a talked years ago. God bless the PSNI.’
O’Neill looked at him. ‘Tomb Street.’
‘No comment,’ Henry, bursting into laughter.
O’Neill waited. ‘Tomb Street.’
‘Wasn’t me.’
O’Neill stared.
‘The butler did it.’
‘Did what, Henry?’
The wino stared at the half-empty bottle. ‘Only a quarter-bottle? You’re a cheap bastard.’
O’Neill looked on, thinking he was wrong, there was nothing to be had here.
‘Give us a feg there?’ Henry said. ‘You never know what might spark a man’s memory.’
O’Neill produced the packet of cigarettes, making to free one. He took it himself and tossed the box.
‘God bless you, guvnor—’ the voice, twee Irish ‘—a scholar and a gentleman.’ Cigarette in mouth. ‘Got a light?’
O’Neill threw it. Henry lit the fag and pocketed the lighter with a sly wink.
‘Tomb Street,’ O’Neill insisted.
‘Oh, no problem. Come out of the Botanics, take a right past Queen’s, down Great Victoria Street …’ Henry laughed, manic, hysterical.
‘Good breakfast,’ he said, fag in one hand, drink in the other. ‘All the food groups.’
O’Neill made to walk away, but turned, thinking one last go. ‘Tomb Street. Couple of weekends ago. Two guys fighting.’
Henry sang to the quarter-bottle. ‘Of all the stars that ever shone …’
O’Neill sighed, stood up and started walking.
‘One guy,’ Henry said, quietly to himself.
O’Neill stopped. ‘What?’
The wino laughed. ‘Henry sees, Henry knows.’
‘Enough of the Yoda. What did you see?’
‘One guy fighting. The other guy standing there, impersonating a punchbag.’ A drunken smile. ‘Used to box too, you know. Holy Cross, Under Sixteens. Stick and move, stick and move. I could a been a contender, I could a been somebody …’ The voice trailed off into a bronchial cough.
‘The guy could box?’ O’Neill said.
‘Debatable. He was no Barry McGuigan. Southpaw mind you.’
‘What?’
‘He was a lefty.’
O’Neill waited.
‘A shit southpaw, big left hand, swung like a hammer.’
Henry looked back at the bottle, squinting at the inch in the bottom. ‘Ah Danny Boy,’ singing again. ‘The pipes the pipes are calling …’
O’Neill took out a twenty pound note and held it in front of the wino. ‘Do you know who it was?’
The tramp smiled, looking at the twenty. ‘Henry’s not a tout.’
‘No, he’s not. But Henry’s thirsty though.’
The tramp sighed. ‘Everyone knows.’
O’Neill proffered the twenty, closer now. ‘Who was it?’
The wino smiled, surrendering. ‘Johnny Tierney.’
O’Neill handed him the money and stood up. He turned and trekked back through park, the pre-dawn sky starting to lighten.
THIRTY
‘You need to get me out of here.’
O’Neill hesitated, taking a second to figure out who was on the phone. He was back in Musgrave Street.
‘They’re gonna kill me.’
Marty was freaked.
‘People are watching. My name’s out. You said if anything happened … we’re coming for you … whatever it takes ….’
‘Slow down.’
‘Listen, the shit hit the fan. They’re looking for me.’
‘Where are
you?’
‘I’m not telling you.’
‘Not telling?’
‘How do I know it wasn’t you sold me to Tierney?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about my name all over a wall. “TONER’S A TOUT”, that’s what it says.’
‘Calm down.’
‘No, you calm down. You can go home to your bed at night, have a few beers, watch the telly. I’ll tell you what. I’ve got nowhere. I can’t sit still for five minutes without waiting on the door getting kicked in.’
O’Neill heard traffic noises, the kid walking, talking between breaths. He pictured him jittery and afraid, a piece of prey waiting to get eaten.
‘Look, take it easy. We can figure it out. There are options.’
‘Like what?’
‘We can hide you. We’ve got safe houses. Places across the water.’
The phone went silent.
‘I need to sort things out.’ O’Neill said. ‘Make a few calls. Come into Musgrave Street. You’ll be safe.’
‘I’ve got to get my money.’
‘Bad idea, son.’
The line went quiet. O’Neill hesitated. ‘I need your help with something.’
‘I heard that before.’
‘Listen, we’ve almost got Tierney. We need to know where he lays his head.’
‘I told yous,’ he said, patronizing, ‘he doesn’t touch the gear.’
‘That doesn’t matter. Where does he sleep?’
‘Nah. Get me sorted first, then I’ll give you Tierney.’
‘No,’ O’Neill said, his heart hard.
‘What happened to the big speech … we’re coming for you … whatever it takes … full of fucking shit so you are. You might as well be Tierney and McCann for all the difference it makes.’
O’Neill let him blow.
‘Look, son, this is how it works. The sweets aren’t free. We need Tierney.’
There was a pause at the end of the line. O’Neill heard a siren in the background, louder then fading. He waited. At least the kid hadn’t hung up.
