by Derek Fee
“Let’s find out who this poor bugger is,” he said pulling at the fingers on the gloves. He bent carefully over the body and slipped his fingers into the side pocket of the black jacket the corpse was wearing. Empty. He repeated the procedure on the other side and pulled out a cinema stub, a used bus ticket and a Bic pen whose clear plastic had been chewed through at the top. He carefully transferred the useless tickets and the pen to evidence bags. He moved on carefully to the trousers pockets. His fingers moved reluctantly. There was an element of violation in examining the contents of a person’s pockets. Even if that person had recently become a corpse. Wilson pulled out the contents of the right hand trouser pocket. There were a half dozen pound coins and some small change. The left hand pocket produced nothing. Wilson dropped the coins into an evidence bag. He moved the body slightly and saw the copy of the tabloid newspaper staring up at him. Rain had soaked the pages and they began to disintegrate as he turned the body. The two smiling girls with the large breasts evaporated as the paper fell to pieces. Wilson let the body return to its original position and stood up. So far not a scrap to identify the corpse. It was likely that something would be found somewhere on the body that would yield a name and an address but Wilson would have to wait until the body had been transferred to the morgue to carry out a detailed search. The canopy moved above his head and he turned to look at the bland round face of Detective Sergeant George Whitehouse.
“Boss,” Whitehouse said in mock surprise. “I thought that you’d be at home with your feet up before the fire by now.”
“The call came in as I was about to head home,” Wilson said wearily. He looked down into his sergeant’s face. The two men were the Mutt and Jeff of the PSNI. Wilson was muscular and stood at well over six-feet while Whitehouse was built closer to the ground at something just over five and a half feet. The face that Wilson stared into was that of a Prussian pikeman and could have been taken directly off his forefather who had lined up along the Boyne in 1690 to fight for King William against the Papists. Woodhouse’s jowls gave him the appearance of a bulldog but the rest of the face was without feature. The nose was neither to large or too small and his eyes were blue but without the depth and liveliness normally associated with that colour. Whitehouse had a build which was normally called ‘brick shithouse’ – he was almost as broad as he was tall and looked like it would take a tropical hurricane to topple him. His paunch hung over the belt of his trousers a testament to his liking for Guinness and the lifetime lack of exercise. His blue plastic suit was XXL and was still bursting at the seems. Wilson had often surmised that George’s family name certainly hadn’t started out as Whitehouse. But who was going to quibble about a bit of foreign ancestry. George Whitehouse was as British as the Queen of England. On second thoughts he was probably just a little bit more British.
“I thought that I’d save you the trouble of rousting me,” Wilson said returning to his examination of the body.
Whitehouse bent to examine the corpse. “Somebody surely wanted this poor sod dead,” he said standing up. “Anyone who thought that those rats had given up is whistling up a gum tree. Fucking murderin’ IRA bastards.”
“Let’s not jump to any rash conclusions, shall we George,” Wilson peeled off the surgical rubber gloves. In Whitehouse's book every murderer was an 'IRA bastard'. “So far all we’ve got is a dead body and the fact that somebody put three shots into his head." He handed Whitehouse one of the plastic evidence bags. “This is all I got out of his pockets.”
“Five will get you ten that the stiff is a Prod,” Whitehouse glanced quickly at the contents of the evidence bag before dropping it into his pocket. “We’re right in the middle of Prod territory here.” He followed Wilson out from underneath the canopy. “Didn’t one of their people say one time that they weren’t gone away. Well he got it right. I knew the bastards couldn’t stay away from killing for very long.”
“Look out, George,” Wilson said running his fingers through his sodden hair. “Your prejudice is beginning to show. I don’t want any rushes to judgement on this one and I certainly don’t want one of my officers shooting his mouth off as to who might be responsible until we’re a lot further along on this investigation. Do I make myself clear?” Why me? Wilson was thinking. Why did it have to happen on my patch? Something inside him told him that there was a shit load of trouble associated with this case and that most of that shit would be dumped on him if he failed to come up with a perpetrator quickly. Just when he was thinking that he would be back to good old solvable murder cases along comes a heap of crap like this. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered one of his lecturers at police college telling the class that eighty percent of murders were committed by a family member or a close friend. In those far off days before the ‘Troubles’ began in earnest, a detective might have one or two unsolved cases in his complete career. For some reason, usually the difficulty in establishing a motive or because the perpetrator was known but couldn’t be brought to justice, those cases might stay open until the day the detective retired. Right now Wilson had worked on more than two dozen unsolved homicides and he was reckoned to have one of the best conviction records in the PSNI. The usual motive for sectarian murder was simply - religion. The perpetrator was generally totally unknown to his victim who was usually picked at random and there were always half a dozen witnesses who were ready to stand up and swear that the prime suspect was miles way when the deed was done.
“Yes, boss, I’ve got that.” Whitehouse said through clenched lips. “But I’m still willing to lay odds that it turns out to be our Taig friends.”
Wilson wiped the rain from his face. “I’ll grant you that this looks like an execution. And I don’t mind telling you that I’m shit scared of this case already. Most of the terrorists you and I know would need a machine gun to be sure of a kill. This one smells like a professional hit. Given the delicate political situation we have at this moment in time there’s going to be a lot of heads looking over our shoulders on this one. So let’s play it cool. No mentions of the IRA until we have something concrete. And I mean very concrete.”
“The bastards’ll never admit it. No claim, no blame. That the game they’re playin’.”
Wilson sighed. Whitehouse had been his second-in-command for the past five years and he was well aware of his sergeant’s dislike for the terrorists of the IRA. Wilson himself hated all murderers whichever side of the religious divide they came from. But Whitehouse was a firm believer that the only way to solve the IRA problem was to shoot six hundred Republicans overnight. Whitehouse was in good company. However, the Peace Process was rapidly turning yesterday’s terrorist into to-day’s politician. It had happened all over the world so why should Northern Ireland be any different. Nelson Mandela, Robert Mugabe, Jomo Kenyatta, Yassar Arafat, the list went on and on. Now the names of the most prominent IRA and UVF men would have to be added to it. That might stick in the throat of men like Whitehouse but there was little or nothing that they would be able to do about it. Wilson could feel the rain penetrating the neck of his suit. The top of his jacket would be getting a soaking but his vanity precluded him from putting on the hood which hung over his upper back. He would have to get out of this weather soon or he would be in the same condition as the poor man under the canopy.
“I want to cover all the possibilities on this one,” Wilson said. “Whoever pulled the trigger knew what he was doing and he definitely didn’t want the victim to survive. My guess is that the second and third shots was for insurance but any fool could see that the first bullet had done its business. That means it could be drugs or some kind of vendetta which carried over from the past. I want to know everything there is to know about that man on the pavement. I want to know his name, where he lived and whether he was ‘connected’ with some paramilitary outfit. I want his relatives and friends questioned. And I want every house on this road canvassed. If anyone saw or heard anything I want to know about it. Use the uniforms. Did you call in Eric?�
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“He should be on his way,” Whitehouse said.
“When he arrives put him in charge of taking the statements.”
A smile creased Whitehouse’s thick lips. “He’ll have his work cut out. You know where you are, boss. This is three wise monkey country. Nobody here will have seen or heard anything. And if they did, they certainly won’t be telling us about it. As for SOCO,‘ he nodded at the ghosts in their blue suits. ‘Those poor buggers will be out all night looking for clues and they’ll probably come up with nothing.”
“That’s Eric’s problem. As far as SOCO is concerned they work on the theory that someone passing through an area always leaves a trace. Let’s not be too pessimistic. You stick with getting the information on the dead man. We’ll set up an incident room in the Squad-Room at the Station. I’ll be Senior Investigating Officer, you’ll be my number two and we’ll make Eric office manager. We’ll hand out the rest of the work later. Make sure SOCO develop the photos of the corpse tonight and have them on my desk first thing to-morrow morning. If our friend did leave any trace when he passed through I want to know pronto.” He pulled another evidence bag containing the shells from his pocket. “Get these over to ballistics. Looks like a nine millimetre and I want to know whether the gun has been used anywhere in the Province.”
“Is that all,” Whitehouse said lifting his head from the notepad on which he had been writing.
“For now,” Wilson said smiling.
A door opened behind his back and an elderly woman stuck her head out.
“I knew it wasn’t over,” she said looking directly at Wilson and Whitehouse. “Them murderin’ bastards will never give up the gun.”
“We’ll be taking statements shortly,” Wilson said. “If you saw or heard anything we might catch the murderer quicker.”
“Faith, I’ll be no help to you. I’m almost blind and I’m as deaf as a post but if I was a man I’d get myself over to the Falls and I’d string up the Taig bastards by their balls.”
She banged the door closed before Wilson could make any reply.
He saw that Whitehouse was smiling to himself. “Looks like they’re going to have to teach people how to spell reconciliation before they can expect them to know what it’s about.”
The smile faded from Whitehouse’s face. “There’s a lot of people like that old woman about. It won’t end that easily.”
Wilson ignored the remark. He didn’t want to believe that it wasn’t over. The general population was tired of war without end and so was he. “Nobody thought to bring a couple of umbrellas, I suppose,” he said to Whitehouse.
“I was at a Lodge meetin’ when my bloody bleeper went off,” Whitehouse said. “I barely got a chance to pick up this bloody suit." He squirmed as though he just remembered how uncomfortable he was in the suit.
Wilson had a bizarre mental picture of Whitehouse’s mobile phone going off in a roomful of grown men dressed in regalia and with their left trouser legs rolled up. He was aware that most of his colleagues were members of Masonic Lodges and the Orange Order. Although he had been born a Protestant he had never been attracted by either the Masons or the Orange Lodge. Not that he hadn’t received invitations. As soon as he had joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary he had been inundated with funny handshakes and invitations of membership. But something inside stopped him from accepting. Maybe it was that old line of Groucho Marx – I don’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member- that preyed on his mind. He knew that his decision not to join either organisation had hampered his career such as it was but that was life. He owed nobody and nobody owned him.
“I’m out of here,” Wilson said. “Before I get my death of cold.” He turned to Whitehouse. “You stay with the stiff. The Doc should be here in a minute but I don’t expect the pathology to tell us anything. Let’s have an autopsy done as soon as they can organise it at the Royal Infirmary. And don’t forget. Keep that big gob of yours shut on this one.”
“Roger,” Whitehouse said and started back towards the canopy.
Wilson walked to the police car and pulled off his plastic suit. He put on his overcoat and slid into the back seat. He'd been right about his jacket. The neck was soaked and he felt uncomfortable. A chill ran down his back but he wasn’t sure it was from the effects of the rain. He didn’t like what he had just seen. It was obviously a professional hit. He could hope that it was something to do with drugs but the corpse didn’t look like he had two pennies to rub together. No, this one looked like a return to the past and that didn’t auger well for a quick resolution. And there would be pressure. The peace between the two communities was new and fragile. Both sides were scared out of there wits of breaking it. The people of Ulster would not forgive those who had taken their hope away. The dead body on the pavement was innocuous enough, even as a victim. But if that body signified a return to violence there would be hell to pay. And right in the middle of this huge shit pit stood Detective Chief Inspector Ian Wilson.
CHAPTER 3
Wilson opened the door of his neat semi-detached house in Malwood Park and tossed his heavy overcoat over the bottom of the banisters. Two white envelopes sat on the mat just inside the door masking the letters W and C of the word WELCOME which was still barely visible on the worn brown weave. He thought the positioning of the envelopes appropriate since his welcome in the house had always been unclear during the period Susan had been the mistress of it. He picked up the letters noticing that both had on the front the dreaded rectangular plasticated slot for his address. A major decision faced him. Did he really need the kind of aggravation that these letters were about to bring him? Deciding that he didn't, he tossed the envelopes on the tablet of the hall stand. He'd open them in the morning. Maybe.
The house in Malwood Park was, like many aspects of his life, a carry-over. His job in the PSNI wasn't the well thought out career decision which marked the current entrants. He was a copper because his father was a copper and what was good enough for his father would certainly be good enough for him. There could be no thoughts of University or even Teachers Training College. The pay and prospects in the old RUC were more than any young man could want. But good and all as they were, his wife had wanted more. Susan wanted the house in Malwood Park even when he knew in his heart and soul that he couldn't afford to give it to her. He'd listened to the admonishments of his parents and he bore the puerile gibes of his colleagues but he'd bought Susan the house she coveted. They lived among the bankers and the stockbrokers in the ritziest area of Belfast and somehow they'd struggled through the first few years of the mortgage with Susan's salary making up the shortfall.
He climbed the stairs slowly heaving with the effort of pushing his large frame up the wooden steps. God, but he was cold and tired. And wet, but mostly tired. He went into the bathroom and started to peel off his clothes. His shirt stuck to his back and he was forced to open the buttons before he could remove it. Every piece of clothing felt like it had been penetrated by the insidious cold wetness. He dumped the clothes in a heap in the corner of the bathroom and stood naked before the full length mirror. Where was the young giant of the RUC rugby team gone? He was twenty, no nearer thirty pounds overweight but his six feet four frame carried the excess easily. It was the face which looked back at him from the mirror which struck him most. The face bore the vicissitudes of life more than the body. The once lively blue eyes were dull and dead, hooded by heavy eyelids. His lantern jaw seemed to hang off the end of his long face and his once prominent cheekbones were beginning to be obscured by creeping folds of soft white flesh.
You need six months in the country, my boy, he spoke to his image as to some long lost friend but in his own mind he doubted whether six months would be enough to revitalise that dead face.
He stepped into the shower and turned the water to full heat feeling the hot droplets sting and redden his skin. Gradually he felt the warm stream wash away the cold.
When he'd finished showering and drying himself
, he walked into the back bedroom. He had moved out of the room he and Susan had shared for the ten years of their marriage the week after she died. It had been a week of sleeplessness. He had lain in their bed each night with his eyes jammed shut waiting for sleep that never came. His mind refused to permit him to glance towards the foot of the bed where he fully expected to see a ghostly apparition of Susan standing over him reprovingly. If there was a life beyond death, Susan would know the depth of his betrayal of her. The sleepless nights finally convinced him that he should leave the room to her ghost. The cleaning lady maintained the room as a mausoleum for his dead partner. He put on his bathrobe and went into the kitchen. Food was normally something he pushed down his throat in the police canteen. He took no pleasure in eating. The fridge was as bare as usual and green mould was beginning to consume a block of cheddar which dominated the empty space around it. He removed the mouldy cheese and a beer from the fridge. After carefully cutting away the mould, somebody had told him that it was carcinogenic, he cut several slices of cheese and put them between two pieces of stale bread. It was time to switch off his mind and switch on the television. He carried his beer and his makeshift cheese sandwich into his living room and switched on the BBC. He prayed for something light hearted to appear. As the screen brightened the news reader sat staring directly at him presenting the evening news. He half listened to the catalogue of the days atrocities from the Occupied Territories, Sierra Leone and the Congo. The cheese sandwich tasted like sawdust and he had to occasionally dislodge clumps of bread from the top of his palette with slugs of beer. Bloodied and torn bodies continued to roll across the television screen making no impact on the already immunised audience. The newscaster had commented that some of the images might cause distress. Wilson wondered to whom. He glanced at his watch and prayed for the last ten minutes of the programme to accelerate.
