by Matt McGuire
A torch came on, hitting his eyes, blinding him.
There was a shot, Marty was on the ground, clutching his stomach. It burned so that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. There was only pain. White hot, radiating outwards.
A figure stepped forward out of the dark. Marty’s eyes bulged, his mouth opened, gasping for air. He could see feet, ankles, shins and felt something metallic being pressed against his temple.
O’Neill woke at 6.30 a.m. and walked through to the living room. His phone was on the sofa and he remembered Catherine’s call, the argument, then Sam and the front door slamming. He picked up his mobile and saw the missed call, the answerphone message.
It had been Marty Toner, three in the morning.
O’Neill held the phone to his ear. There were no words, only breathing, someone running. He heard the gun shot.
‘No,’ he said.
There was the sound of falling, a choked squirm, a winded moan.
O’Neill wanted to be sick. He had to sit down, his mouth open, eyes large. He listened to the second shot, to someone picking up the phone, the call being terminated.
The automated voice interrupted – ‘If you would like to listen to the message again …’
O’Neill sat for five minutes, maybe more.
Eventually, he got dressed and set off for work, not knowing what else to do. It was raining outside and all he could think about was Marty Toner, lying dead in a field somewhere, slowly getting soaked. He pictured a farmer in his tractor, rumbling over the hill, slowing coming to a stop.
A thought wrapped itself round his brain: It’s my fault. Over and over, not letting go.
Behind him, a horn sounded furiously. O’Neill looked up as the traffic lights turned from green to red. The driver was incensed. O’Neill stayed in the car, unsure about what he might do if he got out.
At the station, Doris was on reception. O’Neill floated past, ghostlike.
In CID, Kearney and Larkin were arguing about football. O’Neill went to his desk and printed the warrants for Tierney’s addresses. He felt guilty, looking at the pages, so gave them to Kearney to take upstairs and get them signed.
He looked round at the files, the mugshots, the pieces of paper. He didn’t want to touch any of it, afraid of what might happen, who’d be next.
A voice behind him, Ward. ‘DS O’Neill. My office.’
He followed the DI through, walking on autopilot.
Doris had called him.
O’Neill explained what happened – the addresses, the warrants, the answerphone.
Ward listened like he was hearing a confession for which there was no penance. There was no advice, nothing he could say, nothing he could do. O’Neill would have to carry it himself, to ride it out, to make peace with it in his own time. Ward told him the only thing that he knew would help – keep working.
THIRTY FOUR
Ten o’clock, Musgrave Street, briefing room. O’Neill and Ward, Kearney and Larkin. It was grey outside, the rain easing to a drizzle. O’Neill looked ill, his face drained, bags under both eyes. He stood slowly.
‘Should you be in, sir?’ Kearney. ‘No offence, but you look rough.’
O’Neill ignored it and circulated a photograph of Tierney. He looked at Ward. The DI stood up.
‘You’ll recognize the face: Johnny Tierney, one of Gerry McCann’s boys. We’ve got a body in Tomb Street beaten to death, Jonathan McCarthy, a young man living well beyond his means. Initially, we thought he was on Daddy’s dollar but from the daughter it turns out no. He’s driving a nice car, buying property left, right and centre, and jetting off to Las Vegas when the fancy takes him. The boy’s getting his money from somewhere. We seized a laptop computer from McCarthy’s flat with copies of business accounts. These match up with various small enterprises that we think Gerry McCann is using to launder his drug money. This is all circumstantial though. We’ve no hard evidence. An informant fingered Tierney as the person who killed McCarthy. That informant is …’ Ward paused. ‘…no longer working with us. We suspect he was abducted and murdered by Tierney. Again, we’ve nothing concrete. At Tomb Street there were no witnesses except for some wino who, through a haze of turps, reckons he saw a southpaw taking McCarthy to the cleaners. Johnny Tierney was an amateur boxer back in the mid-nineties, Golden Gloves at the U-16 All Irelands.’
‘So let’s arrest him,’ Larkin said.
‘No,’ Ward said. ‘He’s only part of this. It’s McCann we want. He’s the real target. The dirt might be on Tierney but it’s there because of McCann. We need to watch Tierney, connect him to McCann, then try to roll him up.’
‘You think he’ll roll on Gerry McCann?’ Kearney, doubtful.
Ward stared him down. ‘Here are the addresses …’
They spent the morning watching houses – Stewart Street, Cooke Street, Rutland Street; Kearney, Larkin, O’Neill. Ward sat at Musgrave Street with his notebooks, reading the pages on Michael McCann’s murder.
The radio crackled.
‘Bastard’s having a lie-in,’ Kearney said.
Larkin. ‘Probably had a big night.’
In the Mondeo on Cooke Street, O’Neill turned down the volume. He stared at the address, trying not to think about the Tower.
Twenty minutes later, Kearney spoke. ‘Yous owe me a fiver. He just walked out.’
‘All right,’ O’Neill said. ‘Stay on him’
‘10-4.’
Tierney headed for town, driving, parking in Blackstaff Square. O’Neill and Kearney ditched their cars, tag-tailing him on foot. It had been raining all morning and the drains were starting to backup. Folk jumped back from kerbs as passing buses sprayed water at them.
A mile away, Ward left Musgrave Street with three Land Rovers, ready to take the doors. O’Neill would call once they had Tierney and they’d hit all three addresses at the same time.
Tierney walked purposefully carrying a sports bag. Every so often he would sweep the street and look back over his shoulder. He passed City Hall, its manicured lawns beginning to flood with the rain. Tierney stopped at the Northern Bank on the corner of Howard Street. He looked round, holding the door for a pensioner before disappearing inside.
Kearney was across the street, fifty yards away, hanging back. O’Neill moved to the edge of window and peered through the thick, tinted glass. Tierney was in line, waiting for a teller. The bank was quiet, only three girls on, sitting on stools behind bulletproof glass. After a minute, he walked forward and produced a navy lodgement bag. He passed it through the slot. The teller was a young girl in her twenties. Blonde hair, ponytail, make-up. She emptied the bag out and passed it back. O’Neill watched her put a wad of notes in an automatic counter, then key something into the computer. She smiled and handed over a receipt.
O’Neill slipped into a doorway as Tierney walked out of the bank. He watched him look round him before heading off up May Street. He nodded at Kearney to follow and pushed open the heavy glass door of the bank.
Inside he looked round, weighing up his options. The teller would be tough – too young, too scared of the rules. The counter was pretty public and there’d be folk within earshot. He watched a woman in black suit, wearing an employee name badge, cross the foyer. She was confident, late forties, no wedding ring. O’Neill caught her eye and smiled. She returned the gesture before disappearing into an office off the foyer. The door stayed open and he followed, knocking gently.
She looked up. ‘Can I help?’
O’Neill produced his warrant card and introduced himself. ‘Do you have a second?’
‘Sure. Have a seat. But I have to tell you, if it’s about the robbery, I was in another branch when all that was going on.’
‘No, it’s nothing to do with that. It’s actually a bit … delicate. A guy just came in and made a deposit.’
‘That against the law?’ she said, joking.
O’Neill smiled. ‘Not last time I checked. Anyway—’ he looked behind him, pretendi
ng to check ‘—I shouldn’t tell you this, but we think he’s dodgy.’
‘I can’t give out any information about our customers. It’s bank policy.’
‘I know,’ O’Neill said, lowering his voice. ‘Do you know what trafficking is?’
She hesitated. ‘Sex trafficking?’
‘Yeah. They bring in girls. Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova. Force them to work as prostitutes.’
The smile dropped from her face.
O’Neill leaned in, lowering his voice. ‘These girls are eighteen, nineteen. Half of them don’t speak English. They think they’re coming here to work, learn the language, send money home. They’re raped when they get here. They tell them they’ll kill their families if they don’t do what they’re told. They say they’ll let them go after six months, then they put them to work. Twelve-hour shifts. Think about it, drugged and raped, eight times a day, more even. Some of them have kids back home. They’re told they’ll never see them again.’
The woman swallowed, her face sickened.
‘He was served by the blonde teller. Depositing money, probably under the guise of a legitimate business or something. I need the account details, who it’s registered to, if there are other businesses under the same name.’
She hesitated.
‘You could make a real difference.’
‘The blonde teller?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Wait here.’
The woman stood up and straightened her jacket before striding out the door. She crossed the foyer, entered a number and went through a security door. A few seconds later, she appeared next to the tellers. She said something and the blonde girl stood up and walked out of sight. The manager lifted the transaction slips from her tray and flicked through them casually. She put them back and returned to her office.
Sitting behind the computer, she logged on. O’Neill remained silent, not wanting to interrupt her. The manager punched the keys in front of her.
‘OK. The account is part of a larger set of business accounts. It says this one’s a car wash. I can show you the companies that are registered.’
‘That would help.’
‘There you go. Paradise Bronzing. Looks like a tanning salon. And there’s two more, plus another car wash by the look of it.’
O’Neill felt his pulse quicken. They were the same accounts they’d found on McCarthy’s laptop. They had McCann, Tierney and McCarthy.
‘What about funds? How much is going in?’
‘Couple of times a week. Ten grand, sometimes twelve.’
‘In each account.’
‘Yeah.’
O’Neill did the sums. It was way too many suntans, way too much spray wash.
‘Is there a name on the account?’
The woman scrolled down the page, typed at the keyboard. ‘Hang on a minute …’
He wanted McCann. More than anything he wanted her to say ‘Gerry McCann’.
‘Here it is … a Mr John Tierney.’
O’Neill sighed, his face falling. He thanked the woman and stood up. On his way out of the bank, he lifted the radio to his mouth.
‘Where are you?’
‘Far side of the City Hall,’ Kearney said. ‘He’s in a café, eating a bacon and egg soda.’
‘We’re lifting him. Wait for me.’
O’Neill was crossing the road, when the radio crackled.
‘He’s made me. Shit. He’s moving.’
O’Neill heard running, then Kearney’s voice. ‘City Hall gardens. He’s cutting through.’
O’Neill took off, climbing a bench and landing in a two-inch puddle on the lawn. ‘Shit,’ he said, feet soaked.
The grass was like a water-logged football pitch, huge puddles dotted across the surface. He saw Tierney marching away from Kearney. O’Neill took off running.
‘Oi,’ he shouted, head down, charging. Tierney looked up and raised his hands, like he was giving himself up. O’Neill didn’t stop, tackling him into a huge puddle.
Tierney was on his side, O’Neill over him, a fistful of hair. He punched him in the head. Again and again and again. It was for Tomb Street, for McCarthy, for Marty Toner. It was for getting away with it, for the bullying, for the arrogance. It was for Gerry McCann, it was for sitting in the pub, it was for thinking you could threaten a peeler.
He pressed Tierney’s face into the puddle. You could drown a man in two inches of water. He pressed harder, leaning with all his weight, forcing him into the earth. It was what Tierney dished out to others, what he understood, what he deserved. O’Neill pressed again.
‘I got you, sir,’ Kearney shouted, running into the puddle and taking the weight out from under O’Neill. Tierney’s eyes bulged. He coughed up water, gasping in lungfuls of air.
O’Neill got to his feet and staggered backwards. After a minute, he made his way out of the puddle, utterly drenched.
Kearney had the cuffs on him.
‘Radio Ward,’ O’Neill said, getting his breath back. ‘Tell him to take the doors.’
THIRTY FIVE
Tierney sat in a holding cell while sniffer dogs and search teams ripped the three addresses to bits. Floorboards were pulled, furniture torn, mattresses split. There was nothing. The kid had been right. Tierney knew the game and the value of healthy distance. They’d seized the clothing in the hope they might get a trace of McCarthy’s DNA. No one was holding their breath.
Ward spent the afternoon looking for McCann. He went to the George, the house, did a circuit of the businesses. There was no sign. He wanted to lift him before he heard about Tierney’s arrest. There was a good chance he’d do a runner, go down south, or head to Spain.
Ward decided the house was the best bet and just before nine pulled into Castlehill Park. At the far end was McCann’s place, the lights off, the driveway empty. Ward thought about Davy Price, wondered where he was, whether he’d jacked it in and gone back to Iraq. Two streets away a pair of Land Rovers sat in a cul-de-sac, waiting for the go.
Two hours later, the street was quiet. Folk were in their pyjamas, tucked up in bed, reading books, drinking hot cocoa. A cat prowled along the garden walls, moving silently, looking for a snack. It paused at the Mondeo and cast a cold eye on Ward inside.
The DI heard a car engine behind him and slid down in his seat. A set of headlights swung across the Mondeo. He glanced as it passed, expecting the Mercedes and McCann. It drove past, revealing a Volvo badge. Ward breathed again.
Halfway down the street the Volvo pulled into a space and killed its engine. Ward watched, waiting for the door to open.
Nothing.
The driver stayed put.
Ward looked at his watch, measuring the time. Thirty seconds, a minute. Still no movement.
Could it be Davy Price? Ward imagined a phone call to an old mate, someone still in the force – ‘I need a favour … an address?’ It wouldn’t have been hard.
Ward lifted the radio, called in the licence plate.
Control came back: ‘Vehicle reported stolen. Earlier this evening. Address in Glengormley.’
Clever, Ward thought. You don’t use your own car, why risk it, someone seeing you, getting the licence. He pictured Price in the driver’s seat, service weapon at his feet, cleaned that afternoon.
Ward was halfway to the door handle when he stopped. He looked at McCann’s house, at the Volvo, at the house again. He could turn a blind eye, go back to Musgrave Street, send the Land Rovers away. It would be his contribution, his part in settling the score for Pat Kennedy. No one would know. Not McCann, not O’Neill, not the rest of the force. It would guarantee a result. Tierney had lawyered up as soon as they lifted him. Chances were he’d say he didn’t know McCann, let alone roll over. If that happened it would come down to the evidence and at best they were 50–50.
Ward took a breath, wanting a cigarette, knowing he couldn’t. He thought about Pat Kennedy, wondering what he’d say, whether McCann’s head would be enough to right the wrong. If he walked aw
ay and let Price kill him, it would mean Wilson was right. That he was a dinosaur, that he was still locked in the past, still fighting the old fight. Was it Wilson who’d said that or McCann? Ward wasn’t sure. Either way it grated and he didn’t like it.
He reached for the ignition, his hand pausing. In his head, he heard Eileen Kennedy, he watched her again, breaking down on her doorstep.
Would she be happy with 50–50? Somehow, Ward doubted it.
Gerry McCann steered the Mercedes out of the Cathedral Quarter, past the Albert clock and across the Lagan. He was still in love with the car – the new leather smell, the engine (barely audible) and the way it moved, like a luxury liner cruising the town.
It was a week night and getting late so the roads were quiet. In the passenger seat, Natalie sat with her eyes closed, the last glass of Moët tipping her over the edge. McCann looked at her, admiring her legs in the short red dress he’d told her to wear. There were looks as they walked into the restaurant, other men, eyeing her, pretending they weren’t.
McCann remembered the strip bar in Glasgow a year earlier. He’d paid for her all night then took her back to his hotel. She was Ukrainian, Natalia something. He couldn’t pronounce it but she didn’t seem to mind. Next morning, they drove to Stranraer and the ferry to Belfast.
‘What about my things?’ she’d said.
He’d tossed her a wad of notes.
‘Knock yourself out, love.’
They’d set up in a flat at the start, kept it quiet. The wife was used to him working late, staying out all night, not coming home. Six months later, he had Castlehill Park and Natalia was Natalie.
In the car next to him, the girl groaned, rubbing her hand over her slender stomach.
‘You make me fat?’ she said, her eyes still closed.
‘Don’t worry, love. You can work it off when we get home.’
McCann reached over and ran his hand over her breast. The girl smiled and made the appropriate noises.
Outside, the lights at the Knock carriageway were red. McCann slowed, enjoying the grab of the disc brakes. He tapped the top of the steering wheel, eager to get home, get inside, get her upstairs.
