by Derek Fee
"On the home front," the news reader continued over a picture of Stormont Castle. “The Alliance Party has renewed its demand for the setting up of a South African style ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’. Lord Alderdice said that the Commission should have the widest possible remit to examine some of the atrocities carried out during the ‘Troubles’. He believes that without the severest examination of the actions of all the parties now involved in the political re-construction of the Province, the process of healing the wounds of sectarian strife will not be fully attained. The Unionist majority and Sinn Fein have expressed themselves as being sceptical to such a development. A spokesman for the Unionist Coalition said that the members of his Party believed that there was little to be gained from raking over the events of the past. The proposed Truth and Reconciliation Commission might in fact be counter-productive and lead to a return to conflict.” The picture changed to the wet Belfast street which Wilson had left some time before. "In Belfast this evening, a man has been murdered." The camera panned across the scene of the shooting catching the PSNI officers in their flak jackets cradling their machine guns. Deep red cranial blood still stained the rain washed path. The corpse had been removed before the arrival of the television crew but the cameraman made up for the deficiency of a body by the close-up of the bloody footpath. The face of a well-known politician appeared on the screen mouthing the usual anodyne crap about 'heinous crimes and a population under threat, will this butchery never end etc.'. He had seen the same face wheeled on time after time. Perhaps only one tape existed which the television station played for every murder. He looked for the legend ‘library pictures’ on the screen but didn’t find it. "The PSNI Press Office has stressed,” the newscaster continued. ”That there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the murder was motivated by sectarianism. A team of crack Murder Squad detectives has already been assigned to the case and every avenue of enquiry would be explored.”
Wilson raised his beer and toasted the screen as the news reader smoothly moved to the next story. God bless the good old Press Office. Thirty odd years of practice had made them experts at passing the right message. Now was the time to assuage the fears of the man in the street. Don’t panic, folks. There certainly wasn’t a vicious sectarian killer on the loose. Don’t worry. The bad old days will never come again. It was his misses what done it. Blew his head off and then gave him another one for good measure. In a pig’s arse, he thought. Somebody had wanted that poor bastard dead and the man who had pulled the trigger knew what he was about. This wasn’t a random sectarian kill.
He didn't even get his ten minutes, he thought. The first sectarian killing rated ten minutes, the five hundredth ten seconds. He picked up the remote control and was about to press the off button when the weather map appeared on the screen. The satellite picture showed banks of dirty black clouds spreading from Newfoundland to Ireland. They were in for a prolonged period of `typical' Irish weather. He flicked the ‘off’ button on the remote control and watched the screen go progressively blank. There would be no solace from television. He picked up a Stephen King novel from the coffee table and started towards the bedroom. He needed a good belt of unreality.
CHAPTER 4
Case watched the same newscast on his small television and laughed out loud. He filled himself another glass of Bushmills and toasted the newsreader.
"Thanks mate," he said and drained the glass, "you've just proved that you can fool all of the people all of the time."
He poured himself another glass of the golden coloured liquid and drank it in one swallow. The bottle of Bushmills had become part of his `after-kill' ritual. To-morrow morning he'd feel dreadful but, at that moment, having succeeded yet again, he needed to let off steam. What he would really like to have done was to pick up some brasser in Royal Avenue and screw her brains out. But that would involve a risk. And Case wasn't taking any risks.
Only three more, he thought as he downed another whiskey. It was so easy. Belfast had changed since Case had served with the Paras there. There was a time when the streets were littered with the bodies of those caught up in the 'Troubles'. Then there had been the killings when the turf battles had broken out. Now the 'Troubles' were a thing of the past and the Loyalist and Republican gangs were either involved in real politics or in criminal activities. The guy he had offed might be considered as the result of a drugs turf war rather than a sectarian killing. That's why Case was going to have to muddy the waters. What the politicians and the people feared most was a return to the bad old days. He needed time to complete his mission and he didn't need the fuzz up his arse while he was at it. So the obvious ploy was to make them think it was sectarian. That would send them on a wild goose chase and he would be out of Belfast before you could say Jack Robinson. By the time they copped on he would be on a beach somewhere.
He wondered what his old pals in the SAS would say if they saw him now. “Bastards,” he chanted again and again as though he were standing on the terrace of a football ground. Too bloody violent for them, was he? Well there were people who were willing to pay good money for the kind of violence he had perfected. He took another slug of the whiskey. “Bloody bitch, bloody bitch, bloody bitch.” He chanted at the television screen. He’d loved the Regiment and she’d had him drummed out. He emptied his glass and then re-filled it. He should have killed the slag. He remembered the pleasure he had derived from beating her and her lover to a pulp.
“Should have killed them both,” he said drunkenly. “Should have killed both the slags.”
Wonder where his bitch of an ex-wife was now, he thought. Probably giving her best in some knocking shop or other. He laughed out loud at the thought. It was about all she was good for. Wherever she was he didn't give a bollocks. When this job was finished he'd have twenty grand of spending money in his back pocket. Then maybe off to Spain. Rent a villa on the Costa and live easy for a while. Until the money runs out. Then back to work again. Since he started working for the spooks there had been continuous work on offer. It almost made up for being dumped out of the SAS. He needed the buzz. If he hadn’t been picked up by the spooks he would have gone back to villainy or maybe he would have joined the Oakley Brigade in Iraq. He'd already put his name on the list for Blackwater. The buzz was everything, he thought re-filling his glass. Without the buzz he’d put a bullet through his head.
The Bushmills was beginning to bite. His eyes started to glaze over. Gotta report to the boss to-morrow, he thought, as he slowly sank into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 5
The rain of the previous night had turned into a light mist by morning. 'Soft rain' meant that the population of the island would spend the day gazing at a constant cover of clouds which would only vary in colour between light grey and black.
Wilson had slept poorly for all his tiredness. His legs moved leadenly as he entered the PSNI station which was responsible for what had been the most dangerous fifteen square miles of city in the United Kingdom - Belfast `C' Division operating out of Tennent Street. During Wilson's ten years in Belfast, the station had been constantly under construction until it came to resemble a fortress. It still had a long way to go before it reached the totally armoured state of its sister stations in the Springfield Road and Andersonstown and although efforts were being made to create a ‘softer’ image to go with the new name, the impression of a fort was still unmistakable. No amount of remodelling was going to change its’ character: it would always be an alien body nestling among a hostile population. Wilson wore a blue anorak over his somewhat faded suit. The Desk-Sergeant gave him a cursory nod as he passed through the public section of the station and made his way to the rear of the building where the spartan accommodations of the Criminal Investigation Division were located.
He sometimes forgot that he had been entering this building every working day for the past ten years. If the RUC, or the PSNI as it was now called, had been father and wife to him, then the building at Tennent Street was the womb. As soon a
s he entered through the tall grimy oak front door, he felt at home. There among the stench of sweat and cigarette smoke, cursing and swearing detectives and screaming miscreants, he had found his true element.
His small office was roughly the size of the broom cupboard at his house in Malwood Park. Four pieces of furniture dominated the room; the ancient wooden desk which he had salvaged from the wreckers took up at least fifty percent of the floor space, a dilapidated swivel chair stood facing the desk and what little space remained was taken up by a steel filing cabinet and a battered coat-stand. The floor space directly in front of his desk was covered with stacks of files which stood like mini ‘Leaning Towers of Pisa’, swaying in defiance of the laws of gravity. The office had been cut out of a much larger room by the erection of a glass partition. Beyond the glass in the remnants of the large Victorian room stood the six desks inhabited by the other members of the Criminal Investigation Division. Wilson oversaw them from his glass-walled cubby hole. He often wondered what thoughts ran through the heads of the members of the public who were unfortunate enough to experience the sight he gazed on every day. Raised on a diet of pristine police stations in `Z Cars' and other police soaps, the dirt and grime of a building which the Office of Public Works should have long ago condemned generally came as a surprise.
He tossed his anorak and suit jacket on the battered wooden coat-stand and sat in his chair. The base of the chair creaked under his weight. As usual, a copy of the Belfast Newsletter lay draped over the top of the computer keyboard which had pride of place directly in front of his chair. He wondered casually whether last night's victim had made the paper. If he had, it would be page ten at best. Killings in Northern Ireland still did not constitute real news. Headlines of general interest such as `Vicar Elopes With Fourteen Year Old Schoolgirl' formed the daily staple of news for the Province's readers. Death, whether by tens in Iraq or thousands in a tsunami, was too real to be confused with `news'. He flipped the paper over to the sports section and gradually moved from the rear of the paper towards the front page. The six line story was on page eight. The text was interchangeable with that of any hundred similar stories which had been run over the past twenty-five years. An unidentified man found shot in a Belfast street. Police to release the name of the dead man when the relatives have been notified. Thankfully the newspapers had refrained from speculating on whether the man was the victim of a sectarian killing. At least that was an advance. Nobody wanted to raise the spectre of a return to the past. With a bit of luck there might not even be a follow up story. ‘You’re full of shit,” he said to himself as he scanned the paper for any further mention of the killing. Maybe Whitehouse was right. Thirty years of violence had bred a new type of individual, the psychopath couldn’t give up killing even when the so-called ‘war’ was over. All of the main groups and most of the splinter organisations had accepted the political compromise which had finally stopped the violence. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t some twisted individual out there with a gun who was willing to continue the war all on his own.
"Mornin’, boss," Whitehouse stood at the door of Wilson's office. Nobody ever tried to enter the office, there just wasn't enough room. "You're about early."
Wilson looked up from his newspaper and sighed audibly. "Good morning to you George. Some day you're going to surprise me and say something subtle but I think I'm going to have to wait a bit yet." He shifted his eyes to the newspaper "I see that our client of last night made page eight of the 'Telegraph'. Sign of the times. What did you get on him?"
"His name was James Patterson," Whitehouse leaned against the door-jam. "Address in Leopold Street. He was some class of a lackey in the office over at Mackies. Then got laid off. No previous with us. I've already checked him out with our intelligence people in Castlereagh and with Military Intelligence in Holywood. Nobody's got a dicky bird on him. He's as pure as the driven snow as far as we're concerned. A right anonymous wee bugger if there ever was one."
Wilson's mouth creased into a smile. "You mean to tell me that the standard press statement was true this time."
Whitehouse nodded.
"Any chance that he was a 'sleeper'?" Wilson asked.
"Your guess is as good as anybody's on that one," Whitehouse replied. "Tryin' to keep an eye on the active ones is hard enough without attemptin' to rope in the fools who think they'd like to become part of the action."
"What about the next of kin? Have they been informed?"
"That's the easy part. There are no next of kin. The poor bugger was an orphan. Just like the song says `no mommy's kisses, no daddy's smiles'." Whitehouse paused but Wilson didn't react. "Not only was this guy nobody's child," Whitehouse continued. "But he was nobody's brother or nephew. We can't find a living soul who's related to him. This guy could have landed from Mars yesterday there's so little on him. It wouldn't surprise me to find that he hadn't a friend in the world either."
Wilson thought about the small body with the half head lying Christ like on the wet Belfast street. Nobody owned him, nobody loved him and nobody befriended him. But some bastard took away the only thing he had-his life. Something stank to high heaven in a society where the gun culture had taken over. Maybe it was inevitable after Ulster had seen so much useless death that had basically gone unpunished. You could rub shoulders in your local pub or greasy spoon with someone who had dropped a woman continually on her head until it had cracked open like an eggshell. Or maybe you could have a quiet drink with someone who had set a bomb that had maimed women and children. Wilson didn't agree with amnesty. He wanted to put the psychopaths where they belonged - behind bars. Only brain-dead politicians would put some of the idiots he'd banged up back on the streets. One thing he was sure of, whoever had killed Patterson wasn't new to it. He done it before. Probably many times before. And if he or she turned out to be someone that the pols had released as some kind of political compromise there would be hell to pay. He'd see to that.
"We can expect a quiet funeral, then," he said lost in his thoughts.
"The way things look the state will have to bury the poor bastard."
"That's going to screw up the media no end," Wilson said. "No grieving relations to be interviewed and no bigwig Loyalist pols carrying the Union Jack draped coffin. No luck with the house-to-house enquiries?" Wilson asked.
"Wise up. The uniforms could have your life for keeping them out half the night for nothing. Patterson was let go by Mackies last year. I sent a constable around there to see if anyone there could throw any light on him. Like I said last night, the poor sod happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It looks like we can chalk another one up to the Fenian murderers." Whitehouse placed a single sheet of paper on the desk in front of his superior. "It's all in there," he said as he laid the paper on top of the monitor of the computer. "The pathologist examined the body last night. Nothing new. The autopsy won’t give us anything new. Three shots, the last two were a waste, the first shot killed Patterson instantly. Ballistics ran a quick check on the shells. Standard nine millimetre. Could have been fired from something like a Browning."
"Is that certain?"
"No. It’s just an educated guess."
"Do we have any 'players' on the street with this kind of M.O.?" Wilson asked picking up the file.
"Not that I know of," Whitehouse thought for a minute. "It took some fuckin' balls for a Taig to march into Protestant West Belfast to do this one."
“Let’s not make too many leaps in the dark concerning our perp,” Wilson was annoyed that he had used the word ‘perp’. He hated the American cop shows with their super-cool hero living in a luxurious converted warehouse apartment. Their snappy dialogue was full of words like ‘perp’ and now it was beginning to influence him. He looked at the paunch hanging over Whitehouse’s belt. Nothing could be further from the super-cool image of the cop show. But Whitehouse was a damn good policeman despite the fact that he was also a bigot. He glanced at the photographs of the deceased which had alrea
dy been included in the file. It had been a neat clinical job.
"Are you finished with the paper?" Whitehouse's request cut across Wilson's thoughts. "There were a few football matches in England last night."
Life goes on, Wilson thought folding the newspaper and tossing it to his colleague. The death of James Patterson hadn't even been sufficiently novel to keep Whitehouse's attention.
"Read it later," Wilson pulled his anorak from the coat stand. "Don't ask me why but something about this one bothers the hell out of me. The killer wanted to make sure that Patterson was well and truly dead. If Patterson wasn't a 'player' then there's got to be another reason. I want to see where this character lived." Wilson squeezed past Whitehouse into the body of the squad-room. "We'll take your car."
Whitehouse pulled up outside the house which had been Patterson's home. Leopold Street was typical of the urban blight which the well-meaning Victorian Belfast City Fathers would inflict on the future generations. The dilapidated red-bricked labourer's cottages stood side by side the length of the road. But areas like this were on the up in 'new' Belfast. 'Yuppiedom' had arrived in Belfast along with the Peace Agreement. The upwardly mobile young professionals wanted to live in the city. They wanted to ape their London and New York equivalents by gentrifying the old Victorian streets. The architects and interior designers were doing a roaring trade and the price of property was beginning to reflect the new optimism. The red-brick front of Patterson’s abode was almost black from a century's deposit of city grime. Gentrification had yet to arrive. As the car stopped Wilson glanced around looking for the property vultures. They could always be found in areas like this. He saw no one. Perhaps the rain was keeping them away.
