by Derek Fee
She stopped. ‘Mr Davidson, I didn’t see you there.’
‘Of course you didn’t. Are you on your way home from work?’
‘No, I just popped out for a few messages, milk, bread and the like.’
‘Where are you living now?’
She shuffled from one foot to the other. ‘Not far.’
As far as Davidson knew there wasn’t a shop on Linenhall Street selling milk or bread. ‘Still on the game I see.’
‘No, Mr Davidson, I’m finished with that.’ She looked nervously up and down the street.
‘Expecting someone?’ Davidson knew that her pimp would be somewhere close and wouldn’t be too happy to see her talking to a policeman.
She started scratching at her arm. ‘I need to be away.’
She began to move, but Davidson blocked her. ‘Before you go, I’m looking for a woman called Gillian McAuley. She’s one of your co-workers.’ He saw her go slack and thought she was about to collapse.
She pulled herself together. ‘For God’s sake let me go. I have no idea where McAuley is. If you don’t want to get me hurt or killed, let me loose.’ She tore herself free from Davidson’s grasp and ran off down the street.
Davidson watched her try to run on six-inch heels. As soon as she reached Ormeau Avenue, she disappeared. He took out his mobile and called Graham. ‘Any luck?’ he asked.
‘Are you jokin’, most of my snitches are only going to bed at the moment.’
‘I’ve got the same problem. Except I just ran across one of the working girls I used to know. When I mentioned that I was looking for McAuley, she almost passed out on me. What the hell is going on here, Harry?’
‘I’m damned if I know. So far I’ve drawn a complete blank.’
‘Why the hell would she be scared just at the mention of McAuley’s name?’
‘Only one reason, McAuley is connected somehow.’
‘But connected to who?’
‘I left McAuley’s arrest sheets at the station. As far as I remember there was no mention of a pimp. I’ll get onto Siobhan and see what she can pull up from the computer. In the meantime, let’s continue to pound the pavement. Someone knows where she is, we just have to find that someone.’
Davidson slipped his phone into his pocket and continued in the direction of City Hall. Teresa had been a working girl for more than twenty years and was as tough as an old boot. If there was something about McAuley that scared Teresa, then finding her wasn’t going to be the only difficulty.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Gibson still hadn’t arrived at the incident room by the time Wilson and Browne returned there. Wilson went to his desk and started to work through the results of the search of the crime scene. A day of searching by ten uniforms under the careful gaze of Detective Sergeant Browne had turned up four nine-millimetre calibre shells, a sodden black reporter’s notebook and a cheap Biro. The shells had been sent to FSNI, but Wilson already knew that the tests would show that they were fired from the Browning Hi-Power that had already been identified as the murder weapon. The notebook and pen were in a plastic evidence bag on his desk. They had been dusted for fingerprints and photographed, which he knew had been a worthless exercise. He’d often seen McDevitt’s notebook and the cheap bastard only used pens that he stole from hotels or press briefings. He opened the evidence bag and took out the contents. The pen had a logo on the side advertising a well-known fast wheel-changing service. He put it aside. He opened the notebook and saw on the first page a small box with the legend inside ‘If this book is lost please return to:’ and on the line beneath was the spidery scrawl that represented Jock McDevitt’s name. The pages of the notebook were still wet and he managed to prise some of them apart. He could make neither head nor tail of the scribbled contents. McDevitt used some form of shorthand, possibly something that he had either invented himself or adapted from the shorthand used by secretaries. Wilson closed the book and put it and the pen back in the evidence bag.
He sat back in his chair and thought about the notebooks that he had left with Professor Gowan. He would have to follow up on them as soon as he put the Kielty investigation to bed. That was if he ever put the Kielty investigation to bed. When he looked at the evidence to date, he had a handful of nothing. There was no doubt in his mind that Walter Hanna had been at the scene on the night of the murder. But proving that was going to be a different proposition. Hanna had already cheated the law on multiple occasions and he would be confident that he could do so again. In Wilson’s experience, there was no such thing as a perfect crime, and anyone who thought different was either deluded or arrogant. He was sure that the murder was itself an error. The gang must have been raking in the money from their smuggling operation. Why risk everything by killing Kielty and trying to kill McDevitt? The only possible reason was to protect their racket.
Somewhere along the line that night Hanna had made a mistake, possibly only a small mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. Finding that mistake was Wilson’s sole purpose. The starting point was a trawl through Hanna’s life and the lives of everyone associated with him. Siobhan had already produced a dossier on Hanna’s relations with the police during the Troubles. He had avoided murder charges mainly due to the fact that the RUC in mid-Ulster were overwhelmed with murder enquiries. At least that was one of the reasons he escaped. The second was the duplicity of the individuals who substantiated his alibis. He had asked Siobhan to dig deeper. If Duane’s information was right, Hanna would be making substantial sums of money. They needed to follow the money. They needed to poke into every corner of the man’s life. Ever since McDevitt had given him Hanna’s name he’d known that he was going to have to confront the man himself, but he had been pussyfooting around for the last day or so. He tidied up his desk and put the evidence bag containing the notebook and pen into his jacket pocket. There was no point in logging the items as evidence since they had no connection with the crime. He’d return them to McDevitt at the appropriate time. He looked up as Gibson walked into the room. He was carrying one of those cardboard trays containing four takeaway coffee cups. He put them on his desk along with a paper bag. ‘Coffee and doughnuts,’ he announced.
Browne got up immediately from his desk and grabbed a coffee and doughnut. ‘You’re a life-saver.’
‘You’re in good humour.’ Wilson accepted a coffee and doughnut from Gibson. He was always wary of Greeks bearing gifts. He had formulated a theory in his mind that Gibson had been part of the attempt of making him believe that Kielty had dementia and what happened in the field was a figment of someone’s imagination. Reverend Hunter and Dr Hook were going to pay for their part in the same deception. As soon as he had Hanna tucked safely away, both would be charged with perverting the course of justice. He was going to have to tread more lightly with Gibson. The bigwigs in Castlereagh would not be so happy to see one of their own charged with perverting the course of justice.
‘If you ever had to suffer a meeting with our chief super and managed to escape, you’d be in good humour too.’ Gibson deposited a coffee and a doughnut on O’Neill’s desk.
She handed back the doughnut. ‘Diet,’ she said simply. ‘But thanks for the thought.’
Wilson sipped his coffee. ‘Rory and I called in on Mrs Kielty this morning. We had a rather interesting conversation with her. It appears that the information on Mr Kielty’s dementia was inaccurate.’ He looked at Gibson, who appeared nonplussed. ‘She also mentioned that her husband told her that he had seen someone he knew, Walter Hanna from Moy, smuggling farm machinery that had probably been stolen in the south.’
Gibson sat at one of the desks and bit into his doughnut.
‘Of course,’ Wilson continued, ‘that’s all hearsay and worth nothing in court. I’ve decided to stick my hand in the belly of the beast. As soon as you finish your coffee, we’re off to Moy.’
‘What about me?’ Browne asked.
‘You’ll be in charge of holding the fort until we get back. Also I want you to tr
y to reach Dr Hook. I think you’ll find that he’s taken an extended holiday. If so, just find out when he’s expected back and ask for the message to be passed to him that he can’t evade me forever.’
Wilson finished his coffee and doughnut and stood up. He motioned for Gibson to do the same. ‘Thanks for the refreshments. I think we might be happy for the fortification where we’re going.’
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
When people from the Shankill saw Mickey Duff walking towards them they usually found some urgent reason to cross the street. Nobody could remember who had first stuck the nickname ‘Mad Mickey’ on the teenage Duff but the common consensus was that that person should have trained as a clinical psychologist. A more apt nickname had never been attributed to an individual. Virtually every resident of the United Kingdom had seen Duff in action without knowing it. He was the young man pictured in television news footage jumping around like a March hare almost on top of the biggest bonfire in Belfast on the twelfth of July shooting a gun in the air. But that was Duff at his most playful. He had been psychoanalysed at school, at reform school and in prison. The file prepared by these clinical professionals had diagnosed him as schizophrenic, bipolar, sociopathic, psychopathic, paranoid, neurotic and many other mental diseases not even included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Perhaps the most astute diagnosis was that written on the last page of Duff’s file in some anonymous hand: Mickey Duff is just fucking crazy.
Duff tended to rise late as his job meant that he worked mainly at night. It consisted of wandering around the nightclubs of Belfast offering a cornucopia of drugs for sale to willing punters. Duff might be crazy, but he wasn’t dumb. On the few occasions that he had been rousted by the Drugs Squad they had found no drugs on his person. He gave his customers a chit for their drugs and a phone number to call. The only time that he touched the merchandise was when he snorted it up his nose or injected it into his arm. It was nearly midday when he crawled from his bed. He pushed Gillian McAuley out of his way and made for the bathroom. He was in the middle of one of the longest pisses of his life when someone knocked on his door. He tried to stop but the pee continued to flow and the knocking became insistent. He had no idea who was at the door but whoever it was would be fucking sorry. He finished as best he could and made his way to the door, hoping as he opened it that there would be two straight-laced assholes from Salt Lake City that he would beat the shit out of. Instead he found himself looking into Eddie Hills’ chest and all thoughts of anger and violence evaporated from his mind to be replaced with fear. He invited Hills in.
Hills took a quick look round the room. The skank was passed out on the bed. There wasn’t an ounce of flesh on her scrawny white buttocks. He moved to the bed and covered her with a soiled duvet. Hills didn’t do drugs and this filthy room was the best advertisement for keeping away from the product that paid for his flash suit and his English handmade leather shoes. He turned and looked at Duff. His dark hair was long, grungy and matted and he had dropped ten pounds since the last time Hills had seen him. People were afraid of Duff, not because of his physical prowess but because he was unpredictable. Standing in the middle of a mountain of crap wearing only a dirty pair of cacks, Mad Mickey Duff was more legend than reality. ‘Put your fuckin’ trousers on.’ Hills had been a corporal in the army and was obsessive about cleanliness.
Duff picked up a pair of jeans from the floor and put them on. He took a packet of cigarettes from the nightstand and offered one to Hills, who shook his head. He put one in his mouth, lit it and drew as much smoke as possible into his lungs. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘The problem is that the peelers are looking for your girlfriend.’ Hills nodded at the comatose figure on the bed.
‘So fucking what, let them have her.’
Hills watched Duff’s face as the penny dropped.
‘Why do they want her?’ Duff asked.
‘The kid died, Mickey.’
Duff sat on the bed. ‘Fucking hell, oh fucking hell. Do they know about me?’
‘We don’t know, but it’s a murder investigation so it’s a good bet that they’ll know about you sooner or later.’
Duff jumped off the bed and spat on the woman lying fast asleep. ‘The fucking bitch, she did it. She beat the little bastard. It was me that dropped him at the hospital. I tried to save his life. I’m not going down for something that she did.’
Hills smiled. It was exactly as Davie had predicted. He had no doubt that Duff had beaten the child senseless in a drug-fuelled rage and then dropped him at the hospital. And Duff knew everything about their drug operation and Duff was unpredictable. If Hills had his way, he would have put a bullet in the pair of them. Nobody deserved to have parents like them.
Duff calmed down a little. People like Hills didn’t come around by chance. He suddenly realised that he might be in danger. ‘What do I have to do?’
‘Keep your girlfriend on ice. She’s not to leave here until we decide what to do.’
‘Got it.’ Duff knew that he didn’t have a choice.
Hills turned and walked out the door closing it behind him. It was a pity that they had to deal with the likes of Mickey Duff but someone had to do the donkey-work. He took out his phone and called Best. ‘It’s a cluster-fuck.’
‘We can’t give them Duff. He knows too much about our operation and he’ll sing like a canary.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘We have to buy time and I have an idea about how we can do it. Get back here as quick as you can.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The two men sitting in the car parked outside the Bottle of Benburb pub couldn’t have been more different. The car was parked as far away from the nearest vehicle as they could possibly get. Walter Hanna was a grizzled seventy-year-old veteran of the war to preserve the union of Northern Ireland with the rest of the United Kingdom. Aiden Keenan was a thirty-two-year-old tradesman and the leader of the mid-Ulster brigade of the Irish Republican Army. They were strange bedfellows, representing as they did two organisations that had been deadly enemies for decades. Keenan was aware that the man sitting beside him was credited with taking the lives of half a dozen Catholics for no reason other than their religion. He feared Hanna, but he and his colleagues in the IRA had made a lot of money by cooperating with Hanna and his gang. Mid-Ulster had been a hotbed of Loyalist and Republican activism and peace had created other outlets for the skills that had been honed during the conflict.
Keenan sipped a coffee from a cardboard cup. ‘I’ve passed the message south that we’re shutting the operation down for a while. They’re none too pleased. If only your Henry hadn’t shot the old fucker.’
‘Aye, he was a little bit trigger-happy.’ Hanna was pissed off with his son but wasn’t about to divulge that to Keenan. In Hanna’s book a Fenian was always a Fenian, and Hanna had grown up detesting Fenians. ‘Heard all the stories about his old man. I suppose a couple of warning shots might have been better.’
Keenan looked at the old man across from him. Dealing with Hanna was like playing with a very venomous pet snake. It was a pet but it was still a snake and venomous. Despite his reservations about working with someone with Hanna’s reputation, they made a good combination. He had the contacts in the south and Hanna handled things as soon as the goods came north. ‘McDevitt was on the trail so sooner or later it would have appeared in the Chronicle. However, if nobody had been shot, the peelers wouldn’t be getting their knickers in a knot. Smuggling stolen machinery and contraband might have raised a few eyebrows but murder is a different business altogether.’
Hanna stared at his confederate. ‘There’ll be no problem as long as we all keep a tight arsehole. They have no proof that we were involved. McDevitt identified me, but he was shot a few minutes later so a good brief would make out his recollections mean shit. Kielty’s not talking so what do we have to worry about? We all have alibis.’
‘I checked out this Wilson character with o
ur people in Belfast. He has a hell of a reputation.’
‘I’ve been tracked by better men than him and I’ve never spent a day in jail. Just stay calm and it’ll all blow over. The PPS won’t proceed without evidence and there’s none.’
‘You got rid of the gun?’
Hanna nodded. He was lying. It was the one weapon that he couldn’t get rid of. Whenever he handled it, he returned to the good old days. It was as much a part of him as his hands or legs. He recognised the risk but it was never going to leave him. He looked at his watch. ‘There’s work to do at the farm. Let’s give it another week and we’ll see where we are then.’ He shook Keenan’s hand, opened the passenger side of the car and got out. Keenan sat back, finished his coffee and tossed the cardboard cup into the back seat. It was just before lunch and the car park was filling up. There were a couple of good-looking girls just about to enter the bar. He’d have liked to have gone in and chatted them up but he had a few errands to do before meeting some of his colleagues from over the border. He turned the ignition key and pulled out of the car park.
Jack Duane removed his headphones and watched Keenan leaving. He was sitting in a white van with the logo ‘Paint Magic’ on the side. Inside the van was a camera and some sort of gizmo with a directional microphone that had recorded every word that Hanna and Keenan had said. A cursory look at the van would not be enough to see the hole through the capital M, which had been pointed in the direction of Keenan’s car. Duane had spent a day trailing Keenan and up to that moment it had been a fruitless exercise. He was intent on being there when the two leaders of the gang met up. They should have stuck to being in competition with each other. Nobody wanted to see the UVF and the IRA forming a criminal partnership. People way beyond his pay grade had decided that an example had to be made of Hanna and Keenan and they had been waiting for an incident like the shooting of Kielty and McDevitt. Now they were preparing to drop on the criminals like a ton of bricks. He tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed at the departing car. It was time to find out where Keenan was off to next.
