‘Did he remember anything that he hadn’t mentioned before?’
‘I didn’t see the point in asking him to go over what he had already told us.’
‘What about his plans? Did you ask him what he had in mind to do after the wedding?’
McKenna looked at him in surprise. ‘It was clear he intended to get as drunk as possible.’
Daly wanted to rebuke McKenna for his laziness. He wanted to tell him that a good detective should be able to build intuitions of the truth from a suspect’s body language, a shift in their gaze, a break in their voice, even a change in their body odour. On the most primitive biological level, a guilty person might leak a wealth of information, but it was clear to Daly that for McKenna the thought of groping in this realm of the unspoken left him uneasy, especially when interviewing someone he felt was his social inferior. Daly sighed. He should have questioned O’Sullivan himself, instead of spending time in the family suite staring at Rebecca Hewson’s devastated eyes. He was at fault, as well. The chance to console a distressed mother had seemed to offer him the promise of elevation, of somehow bettering himself, while the prospect of interrogating an evasive gypsy had done the opposite, threatening debasement.
‘We’ll have to interview him again.’
‘I can do it,’ said McKenna sourly.
‘No, you won’t,’ said Daly, unable to keep the note of irritation from creeping into his voice. There was an awkward silence.
‘What else do we have?’ asked Daly. ‘What about eyewitnesses at the hotel? Anything unusual there?’
‘We’ve interviewed as many of the wedding party as possible,’ said Detective O’Neill. ‘None of them remember seeing the boy or noticing anything untoward happening. Oddly, not even the hotel staff said they saw any sign of a boy in distress.’
‘The picture is very confusing,’ said Brooke. The other officers nodded in agreement.
‘You can’t drag a boy across a hotel car park and into a van without making a fuss and drawing attention to yourself,’ said McKenna.
‘So the absence of eyewitnesses suggests he might have gone willingly with these boys,’ said Daly.
‘This seems to be the obvious conclusion. But his parents strongly disagree.’
Daly thought for a while. ‘What do we have on the McGinns?’
‘Again, hardly anything,’ said O’Neill. ‘They are two brothers called Patrick and Thomas, aged sixteen and seventeen, with no criminal record, except for some police warnings over anti-social behaviour. They belong to a clan who had been camping illegally at a farm near the border. The head of the family had bought a field or two and applied for planning permission to build a halting site. However, for some reason, they cleared out of the site overnight.’
Mentally, Daly reviewed the evidence they had gathered, looking for a lead or some hint of a breakthrough in understanding. He rubbed his forehead and felt a twinge of pain. Suddenly, his bruises and swollen features made him feel as though he were wearing a heavy mask, one that had grown out of his skin and flesh and could not be ripped off, no matter how hard he tried. The injuries he wore were a projection of his damaged spirit, a replica of the person he normally kept hidden from view. He stared at the rest of the team, noting how none of them maintained eye contact for longer than a second.
‘We’ve searched O’Sullivan’s mansion outside Dungannon,’ he told them. ‘I had the misfortune to bump into several intruders who were rummaging through his things.’ At the risk of further muddying the waters, Daly recounted his encounter with the men, one of whom he suspected was a former paramilitary. ‘Neither I nor the intruders found what we were looking for. O’Sullivan keeps his mansion like a show house, very neat and ordered, with nothing incriminating lying around. However, on the basis of what I saw and heard, there is no doubt that he is a man with secrets to hide.’
‘Do you think their search is connected with ours?’
‘They were looking for documents belonging to a traveller called Mary O’Sullivan,’ said Daly. ‘It seems implausible that this might be connected to Jack Hewson, but if it is then the boy’s disappearance is linked to criminal elements.’
The team ruminated on Daly’s words. A set of unconnected coincidences or a network of clues? To Daly’s mind they resembled pieces of a troubling puzzle that were organizing themselves into a familiar pattern. Sometimes an investigation felt familiar even if at first sight it seemed completely new and challenging. Certain characteristics triggered a collective memory, as if he’d experienced and solved the case before. Daly felt that the boy’s disappearance was joined to the past, to a dangerous bloodline of paramilitary violence, organized crime and fugitive rootless beings, but what were the links between this world and the Hewsons’?
Right on cue, Irwin reappeared at the window, as though he had been eavesdropping on Daly’s thoughts. He rapped on the glass and beckoned to Daly, who ignored him at first.
The door opened and Irwin stuck his long face into the room. ‘Commander Sinclair would like to see you, Celcius. In his room.’
‘I’m chairing a meeting. Can’t it wait?’
‘No. He’s having a conference with some senior officers. He thinks you might find it helpful.’
‘A conference about what?’
‘The boy’s disappearance.’
‘I thought I was in charge of the case,’ Daly said with anger. ‘Why is he discussing it without my knowledge?’
‘Take it easy, Daly. All will be revealed if you come with me.’
Daly adjourned the meeting and marched out of the room. He followed Irwin up the stairs, feeling annoyance well within his chest. The Special Branch detective could have chosen a shorter route to Sinclair’s office, but for some reason he took Daly along a few more corridors than he needed to. At one point, Daly miscalculated his step and bumped into a female officer coming in the opposite direction. He swayed and tottered a little before catching up with Irwin, who was bounding up more stairs. They were several storeys up now. Stretching ahead of them was a low, white corridor. The featureless walls rang with the empty echo of their footsteps.
Eventually, Irwin stopped and put his shoulder to a door. ‘After you, Daly,’ he said with a grin.
He pushed open the door and ushered Daly into an office that was bigger than the investigation room he had just left, with softer carpeting and more solid wood fixtures. The commander was seated at the head of a table along with Inspector Fealty from Special Branch and two stiff, statue-like men Daly did not recognize. They were both grey-haired and grim-faced, their eyes flicking over Daly as though they already knew everything about him and had their defences alerted. Behind them, the rain was hammering against a large set of windows, which produced vibrating shadows across the ceiling, bringing the features of the men at the table into sharp relief.
‘Detective Brian Barclay, Superintendent Nigel Reilly, this is Detective Celcius Daly,’ said Sinclair. The two men unwound from their chairs and nodded greetings to Daly. ‘They’re leading a special drugs team with the assistance of HM Revenue.’
‘Who’s in charge of this investigation?’ demanded Daly, ignoring the offer of handshakes.
‘You are,’ said Sinclair. ‘Which is why I’ve invited you to this meeting. In the circumstances, it’s wiser you hear this in privacy.’
‘Why are Special Branch involved?’ said Daly, glaring at Irwin and Fealty. ‘Why the need to monitor everything I do?’
‘We’re here to share information,’ replied Irwin.
Fealty leaned forward. His thin face looked abraded by the light from the windows. ‘Commander Sinclair thinks we can be of assistance in your search for Jack Hewson.’
Daly smiled bitterly. ‘I can’t believe this. My first case back on full duty, and I have Special Branch breathing down my neck. What connection do you have with the disappearance of this boy? What possible political trouble can my investigation stir up?’
‘I’ve put you in charge of an important investig
ation, Daly,’ said Sinclair. ‘Hear what the team have to say before you go on the defensive.’
What unfolded, at first, was a series of grim introductions, right out of the handbook of multi-agency cooperation, a bureaucratic trap for a detective like Daly, an outsider, who felt he was floating ignorantly through the systems of policies and protocols. Daly failed to see any sense of structure to the meeting or clearly identify the competing roles of the different crime squads. He found it hard to credit that one missing boy might be the object and source of such a high-powered meeting, involving so many different departments.
Reilly began outlining for Daly’s benefit how the O’Sullivans had aroused the interest of his department, as well as HM Revenue and Special Branch. A grimace flexed on his face.
‘Unfortunately, within the law-abiding travelling community, there is a small, extremely violent, and well-organized gang of criminals that are members of a globally organized crime network.’
Reilly paused every now and again, checking Daly’s response, as though he expected the detective to ask him questions, while his colleague Barclay seemed content to doodle on a notepad.
‘The O’Sullivans have had several brushes with the law, but mostly minor stuff, until early last year, when we suspect some of Thomas O’Sullivan’s nephews had become active in a drug-smuggling ring using cheap furniture imported from Eastern Europe, mostly leather sofas and armchairs to stash the drugs.’
‘Why don’t you just round them up and arrest them?’ asked Irwin. ‘You might get a prosecutor to charge them.’
Reilly grinned ruefully. ‘Not unless they’re going to confess. The only evidence we’ve been able to uncover is based on tip-offs from informers, whose testimony might be questionable. We know that the O’Sullivans have recently made a number of trips to Romania and that they’ve been handling large amounts of cash. Such is the flow of the money that the clan have built a number of mansions, which they hardly ever use. The source of their wealth is suspicious to say the least.’
Daly glanced at the notepad that Barclay was doodling upon. He saw a series of numbers with zeros attached. The detective was adding up sums that did not appear to have anything to do with the meeting. Probably totalling his monthly expenses, thought Daly, or working out how he was going to spend his pension. There was a semi-retired look about him already: the slightly doomed set of his mouth; the vagueness in his eyes, as though he had given up pretending to understand the ramifications of the investigation. Daly knew his type, an old RUC detective who’d spent his career resisting terrorist attacks but now felt adrift with the Troubles over and a ceasefire in place, grimly holding out against the creeping fever of political correctness and professionalism that was transforming the country’s police service.
Barclay flashed Daly a good-natured grin when he saw that Daly had seen his calculations, before crumpling up the paper and tossing it in a waste-paper bin. By contrast, Reilly seemed to be intimately connected with the apparatus of Special Branch. When he wasn’t speaking with his booming voice, he was flashing Irwin and Fealty secret signs with his eyes. Daly wondered what plots had been hatched between the three at a prior meeting to control the investigation from the start.
‘The fundamental problem from a policing perspective is that the O’Sullivans have a brazen approach to borders,’ said Reilly. ‘We can’t tie them down. Not to a jurisdiction or an address. Sometimes not even to a name. They’re all called Thomas Patrick Joseph, or Patrick Thomas Joseph, or some such combination. Even their birth records are awry.’
Barclay stopped scrawling on his pad. ‘We’ve obtained search warrants for their properties, but never found anything. They’re like blank slates, wiped clean.’
Daly recalled his encounter with the masked intruders in O’Sullivan’s mansion, and their hunt for birth certificates, but thought better of mentioning it as he had entered the property without a warrant.
‘They drink hard, fight hard, and as soon as they fall under the attention of the police, they disappear. We arrest some of them but the rest of the clan break into smaller, tighter groups, travelling in convoys of two or three caravans. As such they are the most effective couriers imaginable for anyone wishing to smuggle something across the border.
‘In the past month or two, we’ve been investigating reports of a new criminal gang using the border as a people-trafficking route into the UK with possible links to dissident paramilitary groups.’
Daly looked up and eyed Fealty, understanding the reason for his presence at the meeting.
‘Which brings us to the missing boy,’ interposed Sinclair.
‘If this was an abduction it was a skilful piece of work,’ said Reilly.
‘How can you tell?’ asked Daly.
Reilly raised an eyebrow at Barclay, who began to look uncomfortable.
‘We’ve been conducting a surveillance operation on the O’Sullivans for the past week,’ said Barclay.
Daly said nothing, his eyes watching each of the men at the table.
Reilly shifted in his seat and avoided Daly’s gaze.
‘We had two undercover teams deployed yesterday,’ added Barclay. ‘Our intelligence suggested that the O’Sullivans were planning to use the wedding as a cover for transporting some merchandise. We watched them at the church and then followed them to the hotel.’
‘What did you notice at the hotel?’ asked Daly.
‘There was a much bigger gathering of the clans than we expected. We weren’t able to get close enough to them.’
‘Too many drunken young men strutting round like fighting cocks,’ said Reilly.
‘When Inspector Daly arrived we were forced to withdraw at the risk of jeopardizing the operation.’
‘How did O’Sullivan behave?’ asked Daly.
‘He seemed restrained. Perhaps he was minding his manners. He was the father of the bride, after all.’
‘Did anyone follow them to the courthouse?’ asked Daly.
‘Yes, but when we saw where they were going, we pulled the tail on O’Sullivan’s son. We reckoned that if a drop-off was going to happen, the courthouse would be an unlikely location.’
Barclay looked sheepishly around the table. Daly now understood the reason for the tension in the air. He imagined Barclay writing the report that outlined how a suspected drug smuggler might have managed to abduct a child while under police surveillance. The press would have a field day if they got wind of this.
Reilly cleared his throat, breaking the silence. ‘This was a routine surveillance operation. You can’t train police officers to be on the lookout for a missing child when their minds are focused on another mission.’
Sinclair made a wry face in response. ‘It’s true police officers are trained to keep focused on their objectives, but they should always be prepared for the unexpected.’
On the defensive, Reilly turned his gaze on Daly. ‘What can you tell us about the search for the boy?’
Irwin stepped in. ‘Inspector Daly and his team have yet to define the boundaries of their investigation. They have a suspicion that the boy may have wandered off or run away from home. They haven’t established if this is a case of something more sinister such as an abduction.’
‘We’re examining the family background,’ explained Daly. ‘We’re trying to judge the boy’s frame of mind, weighing up the probabilities. This is the normal procedure. We don’t want to start a witch hunt against the travelling community.’
Reilly stared at Daly. ‘I’ve been briefing officers here about our operations with the travellers for the last six months. How come I haven’t seen you before?’
‘I’ve been on court duty.’
‘Covering for officers who were too busy to attend the hearings,’ said Irwin with a smirk.
‘In the circumstances, are you sure you’re qualified to lead such a sensitive investigation?’ Reilly’s clear blue eyes seemed to suggest that he had already appraised Daly and found him less than adequate.
‘I have no doubt that Inspector Daly is more than capable of heading up the search,’ said Sinclair, rushing to Daly’s defence.
Reilly had kept his candid blue eyes on Daly, and now he turned to Sinclair. ‘OK, I think that should conclude this meeting. Just remember that the O’Sullivans are under our watch, and we’re very close to netting them. I hope that Inspector Daly solves the disappearance of this boy as quickly and efficiently as possible, and that his efforts don’t derail our investigation.’
Barclay tried to mollify the sting of Reilly’s last comment. ‘Whatever has happened to the boy is a tragedy for his family. It is in all our interests to get to the bottom of it.’ He gave Daly a reassuring smile. ‘Be sure to tell us what you’re doing and we’ll do our best to help.’
Daly wanted to say that this was a separate criminal investigation and had nothing to do with the remit of the drugs squad, HM Revenue or Special Branch. However, he made an effort to smile cheerfully.
Fealty nodded and eyed Daly. ‘A man of your seniority needs to be communicating with the other departments of this police force.’
As they left the room, Irwin came up close to Daly, who was still smiling. ‘I hope you’ve taken all that on board.’
‘Not a word of it,’ said Daly. ‘My investigation is none of your bloody business.’
‘Then why are you looking so happy?’
‘Just thinking of all the court hearings I missed today.’
Irwin’s expression grew agitated. ‘Consider it a few days off, Daly. Knowing your style, you’ll be back skulking amid the town’s petty criminals before very long, looking for your usual hiding place.’
Daly walked away, feeling Irwin’s overheated gaze upon his back. A door opened and a group of young Special Branch officers crowded into the corridor, thronging both sides of his vision with their bland, watchful faces, emitting their coded signals to each other as he passed them by with his bruised face. Daly felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He hoped that the surge of detective work and the urgency of his search for the missing boy would carry him safely beyond this morbid delusion that his colleagues were keeping him under constant surveillance.
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