Nothing but Memories (DCI Wilson Book 1)

by Derek Fee

  Moira shuffled uneasily. She could see the redness in his cheeks and noticed that his eyes were watering. He had already drunk three large free-poured whiskeys and he obviously hadn’t eaten all day. That was probably enough to put an elephant to sleep. It was time to beat a retreat. She certainly didn’t want this to get embarrassing.

  "You should have stayed in that job in the Civil Service," Wilson continued. "Take my advice and go back to your family. Forget all this business about contributing. You’re a nice intelligent lass with a future. Forget the PSNI. There's only pain in this job." He finished the contents of his glass and poured himself another.

  "I think I should be off," she said laying her glass down on a stained mahogany coffee table. She hadn't expected that she would be drawn so closely into Wilson's private world. She'd heard that many officers suffered from burn-out and suspected she was witnessing at least part of Wilson's trauma. Too many dead bodies followed by too many fruitless investigations created cynical husks of men who had once really cared.

  "Good-night, Moira," Wilson said sitting on the sofa with a thump. "I’ll be alright here. You see yourself out." He watched the young woman's back disappearing into the hallway. “Christ, I'll have to eat something or this bloody stuff will rot my guts.” He tried to rise from the chair but then thought the better of it. He'd phone the Chinese take-away later. He sipped on the whiskey and sat back. He never felt his eyes closing.

  CHAPTER 21

  The little alarm bell had been ringing inside Joe Case's head for several minutes but he chose to ignore it. His day had been the model of inactivity. After lunch in a city centre pub, he had spent the afternoon at the movies. Now, completely relaxed, he was seated at a corner table in the `Black Bear' in Agnes Street. Case raised his pint glass to his lips and glanced around the room looking for the source of his internal disquiet. There were about fifteen other people in the pub scattered in groups around the bar. His eyes flitted over the groups assessing them before dismissing them as potential threats. He stopped as his gaze fell on a group of four men standing drinking at the bar. The level of his alarm bell began to increase. There was something about the four men that wasn't quite right. He put down his pint glass and resumed his reading of the evening paper in such a way as to keep the group at the bar under observation. It was always a bit dangerous hanging around known Provo or UVF haunts. The highest thrill for SAS men serving in Northern Ireland was to pass themselves off perfectly in Republican or Loyalist strongholds. To do that you needed the right accent and a repertoire of the right songs. He loved feeling the adrenaline flowing in torrents as he had sat there right in the midst of the enemy belting out either 'Kevin Barry' or 'The Sash'. The high was incredible but so were the risks. Anyone found to be playing that game was liable to end up wrapped in barbed wire and face down in a field in South Armagh. The internal alarm bell was proving reliable yet again. The four men at the bar were talking animatedly and he could see occasional glance being shot in his direction. Instinctively, he rubbed the inside of his right foot against the inside calf of his left leg feeling the comfort of the sheath containing his combat knife. Four to one was pretty steep odds and considering that this was Belfast it was odds on that if the boys at the bar were 'connected' and that some kind of weapon would not be too far away.

  Case slunk back in his seat as two of the men at the bar detached themselves from the group and made their way towards his table.

  "My friend here says that you're a fucking Taig," the man who spoke was in his thirties and of medium height. A large paunch drooped over the belt of his trousers and his forearms were covered with the obligatory tattoos.

  Case looked up slowly from his newspaper. His glance passed from the speaker to the `friend': a lanky youth of about nineteen with long mousy brown hair. "Your friend has his head up his fuckin' arse," his Belfast accent was faultless.

  "You're not from round here, are ye?" the heavy set man spoke again.

  "Mind your own fuckin' business," Case resumed his reading of the newspaper.

  The young man leaned over the table and laid a bony hand on the newspaper. "My two mates at the bar," he flicked his head in the direction of the other two men. "They think you're a Taig too."

  "Then you've all got your heads up your arses," Case pushed the young man's hand off the newspaper. He smiled as he felt his heart rate dropping and his emotions becoming cold. He had been astonished when he had seen some of his comrade’s reactions to battle. Their hearts pounded and their palms began to sweat. He was the complete opposite. He was now completely ready for action. He would deal with whatever was coming whatever the consequences to himself.

  The heavy set man looked around the pub. "There's a yard at the back of the bar. We'll talk there. If you're not a Taig, then you've nothing to worry about."

  Case sat looking into the two men's faces. This was trouble with a capital T. He was in no doubt that he'd had the misfortune to run into a group of the local crazies. At best he was going to pick up a beating and at worse the bastards might actually go the full distance and kill him. Since he had urgent business to conduct, he couldn't afford either. "OK," he said folding the newspaper neatly. "Should I finish my pint before we leave?"

  The two men looked at each other and the younger one smiled.

  "I think maybe you should finish the drink," the older man said suppressing a grin.

  Case picked up his pint glass and swallowed the contents. "Let's get this over with." He was aware of every eye in the pub watching as the two men led him to the bar. He ran his hand along the left side of his face obscuring it from the view of the onlookers. It wouldn’t be wise for him to be recognised. If the police were to enquire in the future whether he had been in the pub, none of those watching him so intently would remember. They were all `non-witnesses' to what was happening. The two men at the bar finished their drinks. He saw one of them nod at the barman and the barman passed a baseball bat across the wooden counter.

  Ah shit, Case said to himself. He looked into the face of the man who had received the bat and was slipping it under his coat and resolved to do real damage to the bastard.

  The four men led him towards the rear of the pub.

  The heavy set man opened a door which led into the yard at the rear and indicated for the group to pass through. "Arty," he said to one of the men who had been at the bar. "Plant yerself here and watch the buggers inside. We don't want some nosy bastard decidin' to take a piss out here."

  Sheets of rain poured into the exposed part of the yard. Case and the three men stood under a canopy which covered roughly half the space between the buildings.

  "Who the fuck are you then, Taig?" the heavy set man punched Case in the side of the head.

  Although the blow stung Case only marginally, he let himself fall to his knees. He felt a stream of rainwater running across the knees of his trousers. He'd been right. This wasn't going to be an interrogation followed by a beating. The beating was going to precede the interrogation.

  "You're not so fucking cocky now," the mousy haired youth kicked Case's side and the three men laughed together.

  Case moaned and the men continued laughing. The bastards were gettin' off on his pain. He came upright suddenly ramming, as he rose, a bunched fist into the genitals of the man holding the baseball bat. He felt the air exhale from the man's body in one sudden gust before he collapsed onto the soaking wet cobbles. The bat clanged on the stones of the yard skipping away from the four men. The heavy set man stopped laughing just before Case punched him violently in the throat. The man fell to the ground clutching his throat and retching. The mousy haired youth tried to run for a wooden door at the other end of the yard but slipped on the wet cobble-stones and pitched forward across the rain soaked yard.

  "You should learn to kick a bit harder, mate. Like this." Case unleashed a kick which shattered the youth's jaw and sent him rushing headlong into oblivion.

  It was less than thirty seconds since Case had started moving. T
he door from the pub into the yard started to open.

  "Is everyth..."

  Case pulled the door and the man called Arty came flying into the yard tumbling over the prone bodies of his comrades. Before he could regain his wits, Case kicked him in the side of the head and Arty fell senseless onto the ground. The man who had earlier been holding the baseball bat was lying doubled over holding his genitals. Case kicked him hard in the spot where he held his hands and felt satisfaction as the toe of his shoe bit into the soft tissue of the man's groin. The man's scream died in his throat and his eyes widened as he watched Case bend and remove the knife from the sheath on his leg.

  "I have a thing about arseholes trying to beat me up," he held the knife up so that the prone man could see it. "You should always try to know who you're screwing with," he put the sole of his right foot on the man's throat. He smiled as he saw the fear in the prone mans eyes and smelled the astringent smell of fresh urine. He pulled the man's right hand towards him and pushed back the cuff of his coat exposing a full white hand.

  "Hey your hand's the wrong colour," Case said. He placed the man’s hand on a wooden packing case and chopped down vigorously with the razor sharp combat knife severing the thumb at the joint. "Your symbol's the red hand isn't it," he said as he repeated the process with the index finger. "Now you can have one all to your self."

  The prone man fainted and his bloodied hand went limp. Case severed the remaining fingers and let the emasculated hand fall across the man's body.

  Time to go, Case thought. He moved across the exposed part of the yard and let himself out through the back door. His ribs hurt where the youth had kicked him. "Fucking pussies," he said and moved away quickly.

  CHAPTER 22

  Sammy Rice was fit to be tied. Nobody but nobody woke up the UVF chief at three o'clock in the morning unless some catastrophe had occurred. Rice sat huddled in his dressing gown in the front parlour of his terraced house in Woodvale Road in West Belfast. A convection heater blew a blast of lukewarm air across his feet and into the cold room.

  "This better be bloody good," Rice glowered at the three men standing facing him.

  "It is," Ivan McIlroy, Rice's eyes and ears on the streets, stood on the other side of the heater. "This is Bobby Gillespie and Steve Lennon from the `Black Bear' mob. You might remember them." The two men who had approached Case in the `Black Bear' earlier that evening stood at McIlroy's side.

  Rice looked at the two men standing beside his principle lieutenant. Both were covered with grime and looked like they'd just about survived fifteen rounds with a sex starved gorilla. The younger of the two had an angry looking black mark down the side of his face. Rice couldn't remember meeting either man but he nodded his head in affirmation.

  "You can see from the state of them that the two boys were in a real dust up this evening," McIlroy continued.

  "Get to the point Ivan or get the fuck out," Rice huddled closer to the heater. His patience was growing thin.

  "Look Sammy, you yourself told me to report anything peculiar and you'll find this very bloody peculiar? OK."

  Rice nodded.

  "Bobby and Steve were havin' a few jars in the `Black Bear 'this evenin' when they spied a stranger at one of the tables. The boy wasn't one of the locals. Bobby and Steve reckoned he might be a Taig."

  "Don't give me that shit," Rice said looking harshly at the two men. "They were out for a bit of fucking violence."

  "You're right they were," McIlroy threw an admonishing look at the two men. "The stupid bastards were with a few mates so they decided to ask the stranger outside. You know the score. The guy went along quietly enough. When they got him outside they started asking questions and the bastard went berserk. He beat the shit out of the four of them and get this, he picked on one of them and lopped off all the fingers on his right hand. The guy's in the Royal Infirmary. They're tryin' to sown the fingers back on."

  Rice sat upright. "You mean to tell me that some bugger single-handedly beat up four members of the UVF."

  "You've got it," McIlroy said.

  "Who the fuck was he?" Rice's mind was replaying the conversation the Belfast Command had had with Simpson. Anything out of the ordinary. He'd seen almost everything during his lifetime as a terrorist but this one beat banagher. He looked at the two men who stood in front of him. Whoever had beaten up on these guys was one tough bugger.

  "We don't fuckin' know," the young man with the mousy hair spoke with apparent pain. His voice was garbled. "The bastard started on us as soon as we got him into the yard behind the pub."

  "Tell me exactly what happened," Rice wrapped himself in the dressing gown. "Leave nothing out."

  Gillespie began to describe the events of the earlier part of the evening and the violent happenings in the back yard of the `Black Bear'. "It was all so fast none of us knew what was happenin'," he concluded. "When we came too the bastard was gone and Georgie’s fingers were lyin' around the yard. We picked up the fingers and they’re bein’ sown back on at the Royal. They say that he'll never have the full use of his hand again."

  "Lucky it was his hand and not his dick," McIlroy said laughing.

  "What did he look like?" Rice asked. The barbarity of Case's actions made no impression on the UVF leader.

  Lennon's swollen face frowned as he tried to picture the man who had inflicted the injuries on him. He glanced across at Gillespie. "He was about medium height," he began, "and well built. Aged maybe thirty to thirty-five, dark hair, the face I don't remember so well. Nothing about it stood out. He was wearin' a reefer jacket and he spoke with a Belfast accent." He shook his head. "That's all I can remember."

  "That's fucking marvellous," Rice said angrily. "Some arsehole beats the livin' shit out of four of you, lops the fingers off one of you and all you can remember is that he was a pretty ordinary bloke who was wearin' a donkey jacket. Get to hell out of here you pair of gobshites. I'm only sorry he didn't cut your fucking heads off."

  Gillespie and Lennon turned and left the room.

  "What do you make of it?" Rice's asked as soon as he and McIlroy were alone.

  "Damned if I know?" McIlroy asked. "The `Black Bear' mob is one of our toughest unit. Anybody who could take out four of them has got to be somebody to worry about. The bastard must be some kind of superman."

  "Who do you think he was?" Rice asked.

  "It sounds like SASman to me," McIlroy said using the term applied by both the Protestant and Catholic paramilitaries to the members of the British Special Air Service. "Only somebody of that kind could've gotten out of the `Black Bear' alive."

  "Couldn't he be a Provie?" Rice asked.

  "No chance. They don't have anybody that good on their books."

  "OK," Rice said trying to order his thoughts. "Let's just suppose that this guy was SASman. And then let's suppose that he's the one who offed the three Prods. Then we have to ask ourselves what the fuck is goin' on? Why are they doin' it?"

  "Could be they want to get the Provies and ourselves at each others throats. It wouldn't be the first time the Brits've used disinformation tactics," McIlroy said.

  Rice sat thinking for a moment. It certainly wasn't beyond the Brits to launch an operation aimed at getting the Provies and the UVF to start slaughtering each other. It had been done before. If that was what was happening then why didn't he know about it. For the past five years he had been secretly working for the Military. Only on the surface of course. They had proved useful allies in his climb to leadership of the UVF. Many an adversary had been lifted off the streets after a tip-off to the Brits. Rice made a mental note to follow that one up with his contact in Military Intelligence. But what if the Brits weren't involved? Could the bloke in the 'Black Bear' be the killer Simpson was looking for? What if the motive wasn't political? What if the killer was a rogue, some twisted bastard murdering for some motive known only to himself? If the bastard was acting from personal motives, why kill only Protestants? Rice knew all the questions but he still had to
work out some of the answers. Something was beginning to smell rotten and he wanted badly to be the first man to locate where the smell was coming from. For the present he was one step ahead of everybody else. He was the only one with a description of the guy who might be the killer. Even if that description was half-baked. It wouldn't matter. The UVF had tentacles that stretched into every house on every street in the Protestant ghettos of East and West Belfast. He was going to find the bloke from the 'Black Bear' and he was going to find out why he was topping ordinary Protestants. Then he was going to use that information to squeeze some advantage out of the Brits. Fuck Simpson and his limp-wristed politician friends.

  "There's something fucking rotten goin' on here, Ivan," Rice said switching off the heater and standing up. "And I want to be completely on top of it. Right."

  McIlroy nodded in affirmation.

  "If that bastard is somewhere in Belfast," Rice said. "Then I want to know where he is. Contact the rest of the boys. Give them a run down on what happened tonight and warn them to keep their mouths shut. They're to put the word out on the streets that we're lookin' for a stranger. The description isn't worth crap but give it to them anyway. I don't care what it takes, I want that bastard first." Rice switched off the light in his living room and walked McIlroy into the small hall of his semi-detached house. Gillespie and Lennon stood waiting beside the front door.

  "This is top priority. Drop everything else and get on it." Rice slid the large bolt on the steel inner door and let the three men out onto the street. Spits of rain and a cold breeze blew around his feet as he watched the three men disappear into the rain-laden darkness. Arseholes, Rice thought watching Gillespie and Lennon’s departing figures. They'd almost got the bastard. As he closed and bolted the front door and the steel inner door, a second thought struck Rice. The bastard had the four `Black Bear' boys at his mercy, but he didn't kill any of them. Rice wondered why.