The mention of murder was a mistake. Smith saw O’Dell back away and silently cursed himself for it. He said, ‘I don’t need any names. I don’t even want any names. If you give me names, I’ll have to stay and I’d much rather be going home. All I need is a place. The place where they buried him, because that’s what they always did.’
It wasn’t enough. O’Dell eased his bulk back in the chair and shook his head once or twice. Sean turned over a page of the newspaper, and at the bar the flat-capped man and the bartender continued a desultory conversation. There might be more than one reason why O’Dell could see no point in giving Smith what he wanted, and one of those reasons might be that he had concluded that Smith would not be continuing with the investigation and therefore did not require further information. What had O’Dell said – the condemned man and all that? Better make this cigarette last as long as possible.
‘I don’t think I can help you, Mr Detective.’
‘And I think you mean you won’t rather than you can’t. But that’s your choice. I’m not going to try any of the heavy stuff. I’m not going to rough you up a bit.’
‘Thanks for putting my mind at rest on that score, anyway.’
Smith nodded as if that really had been his intention.
O’Dell said, ‘So what now? Are you done here in Belfast?’
‘No. Still two to go. I don’t know where to find Tommy but I understand that Lorcan should be available – I’ll just have to make an appointment.’
Just for a moment, the pleasure that O’Dell had taken in having this situation under his control wavered; at the mention of those names, his eyes flickered across to Sean, who, to his credit, never gave an inkling that he had heard them.
‘I’d not advise you to go looking for Tommy Blake.’
This was most promising – O’Dell was concerned for his welfare. Perhaps he wasn’t going to dismembered and pickled in Guinness after all, at least not this afternoon.
‘He’s still around then. I had wondered whether you’d already been in touch and he would be here as a part of the reunion. I knew that Lorcan would be too busy to make it at short notice.’
‘Too busy? Too effing important. He has nothing to do with the likes of us, hasn’t in twenty years. Sinn Fein? Fancy dinners with the very people that were gunning down our boys on our streets, even his own brother! Towards a united Ireland but only by peaceful means? It’s nothing but a gravy train…’
The cigarette had gone out in the ash-tray. Smith lit it again and drank the last of the Guinness. Still holding the glass, he asked O’Dell if he could get him another, and the Irishman laughed aloud at his cheek and said yes, why not.
When he was back at the table, Smith said, ‘It’s always the way. The rebel leaders become the bosses in the end, and then it’s meet the new boss, just like the old boss. Have you read ‘Animal Farm’?’
‘I have not.’
‘Well, don’t bother now. You’ve seen it for yourself.’
O’Dell mumbled to himself ‘’Animal effing Farm’ and drank some of the beer that Smith had bought for him. And Smith did spy a kind of hope.
He said, ‘It’s obvious that some of Lorcan’s boys picked up Brann O’Neill. It wasn’t you or Martin or Eamon. Tommy? Maybe but I’m guessing not. Lorcan always had the youngsters ready to go, eager to please, and I’m sure that’s what happened. They found him at the university and marched him out through a side-door or something like that. Then what? They’d have taken him to Lorcan, very pleased with themselves. Lorcan saw Brann alive that night. He would have asked him plenty of questions – how much had he known about me? Where was I now? Was he a tout as well? I can imagine all that happened.’
O’Dell was listening and watching, showing no sign that Smith had got anything wrong so far.
‘I can’t make out what took place after that. You were all afraid of Lorcan, yes?’
The question seemed to jolt O’Dell out of the reverie into which he had fallen as he watched and listened to the mongoose performing in front of him.
Smith said, ‘Don’t be insulted – so was I. So would any sane person have been. But why, apart from the fact that he was a psycho? Because he was a clever psycho. I mean, look where he is now. They’re the most scary sort, the clever ones, and I should know, I’ve met a few since then. That’s what I don’t understand. Lorcan Quinn was way too smart to have killed Brann when others knew he had been with him that night, however pissed off he was about me. Either he didn’t know it was going to happen or he got himself well clear before it did. I plan to ask him which it was at some point. As to the body… I can’t imagine him with a shovel in his hands but he’ll get me closer to whoever did have one.’
After a silence, O’Dell said, ‘He’ll never see you. He won’t give you the time of day, no more than he would me.’
Smith nodded as if he agreed, and drank more of the Guinness, which tasted even better than the first pint – the mark of a truly great glass of beer. The fact that he was no longer afraid for his life, not in the slightest, made it all the sweeter.
‘He certainly won’t want to see me. But I can be quite persistent. What’s the security like up at Stormont?’
O’Dell shrugged and didn’t answer.
‘I expect there’s a nice big foyer where you can hear someone shouting. Must be a permanent press office, as well. If I can find his secretary, I’ll get her to say that Stuart Reilly would like a quick word.’
Michael O’Dell was smiling at the idea, and shaking his head again at the same time. Smith emptied the glass and put it down.
Smith said, ‘If you can give me something, anything, however small, just to let him think I know enough, it would help.’
More silence from the Irishman, but it was the silence of serious consideration this time.
‘For example, a name or two, of the boys that brought Brann O’Neill to Lorcan. If he thinks that I know those and that I’m going to be looking them up as well, he might feel inclined to take me seriously. He’s certainly going to feel that his day could have gone better than it is.’
If he had judged this correctly, O’Dell might go for that. An appeal on behalf of the O’Neills had failed but the chance to hurt Lorcan Quinn might tempt Michael O’Dell; of the two men who had damaged the cause, O’Dell would probably have the greater contempt for his former leader. In sending Smith towards Quinn armed with a live grenade – and that’s what a name would be – O’Dell was not beyond calculating that he could harm the both of them.
‘Jackie Fitzgerald was one of them. I remember him because his father was the boxer – fought for the Ulster championship one time.’
Smith accepted the name quietly, calmly.
‘OK. That’s useful.’
And then, because the questions to which we already know the answers are often the most productive, he said, ‘Just as a matter of interest, was Aidan Quinn involved?’
‘He was not. He was shot down in the Ardoyne the same night. How could you not know that?’
‘It’s me, getting my wires crossed. Thanks for clearing it up.’
Smith got to his feet, and Sean looked up at him and then at O’Dell.
Smith said, ‘Right. I’m going to catch a bus over to Stormont.’
O’Dell looked vaguely puzzled as to how they had reached this point, and didn’t answer.
‘So, I’m wondering whether your two chaps outside will realise that I’m leaving with your blessing, so to speak…’
O’Dell turned to Sean and said, ‘What two chaps is he talking about?’
Sean said, ‘Two chaps? T’be sure, I’ve no idea.’
Chapter Thirteen
In 1985, this was one of the ways in which he had travelled about the city, and being back on these buses brought those times to him again. He had owned a bicycle then as well, and often used that to get him out to Rourke’s bar, and later to Hannahstown and the O’Neill family home. Sometimes Henry Lee, his flatmate, borrowed his brother’s
car but Smith had never accepted lifts from other members of the unit, even though he knew other undercover soldiers that did so. He lived the life of Stuart Reilly the student completely, and so convincingly, that in the end it had become almost indistinguishable from the life of Captain David Conrad Smith. He had entered and had dwelt in the curious no-man’s-land familiar to all deeply embedded operatives and their handlers – a place so strange that only men and women of a certain detachment can survive in it for any length of time. That ability – or is it perhaps a disability? – matters as much, and maybe more, than the quick-wittedness and physical courage that are the more obvious prerequisites of a life of absolute deception.
He had to change buses at the terminus in the city centre, and there was a wait of twenty minutes. That gave him time to sit on a bench, to enjoy the pleasant after-effects of the two pints, to look around for anyone who might be taking an interest in him, and to think. He was certain that no-one had followed him this morning. It was difficult on a bus, and there had been only three other passengers on the ride back into the city, all of whom had gone their separate ways without a backward glance. Mobile phones made it much easier these days to arrange take-overs of surveillance, but looking around he could see no-one who might have done so.
He took out his own mobile and checked his present location. Of course, there was the phone itself, and he remembered the events of last year when they had been searching for Petar Subic in Kings Lake – but to imagine that the IRA had that sort of capability really was to stray into the realms of paranoia, and this phone had not been out of his hands since well before leaving England. Satellite tracking? No, they couldn’t do that either, splintered as they were into the angry, ageing and somewhat sad little groups that met in places like Old Timothy’s.
Martin McCain had not known the truth about Aidan Quinn, and neither had Michael O’Dell. It was difficult to believe but it must be so. That, more than Stuart Reilly’s betrayal of the cell, was what he had assumed would determine their reactions towards him, and there had been nothing, no hint of their knowing what had taken place. The likely truth was slowly taking shape in Smith’s mind as he came at it from different angles, playing out various scenarios, and it was a truth more shocking and dangerous than any that he had brought with him on the ferry. More dangerous to Lorcan Quinn and, therefore, more dangerous to anyone who had come into the possession of it. If the name Jackie Fitzgerald was a live grenade, the truth about what happened to Aidan Quinn could be fifty pounds of Semtex packed into the boot of a Ford Cortina. Was he really about to go and park such a thing in the foyer of Stormont Castle?
The Great Hall is a public space between the hours of 09.00 and 16.00, Mondays to Fridays. Smith waited in the short, post-lunch queue to go through the security check, aware that one of the guards had watched him since he joined it; not too difficult to guess why, he thought. This bloke’s neither one thing nor the other – on his own, not dressed like a tourist, no camera, not an official of any description, not a journalist. But nothing beeped and they had no reason to detain him other than his being a little too ordinary, a little too extravagantly non-descript.
It is a magnificent building, even more so inside than out. There is, of course, something about marble – it is stone with the authority of beauty, and it lends its own sense of permanence to the laws that are made within it in legislative assemblies across the world. In Stormont, the three shades of Italian travertine – walnut, cream and gold – combine in a harmony that belies the uneasy truces that have prevailed here since 1998. Four times the parliament has been suspended, and then the halls are silent; listening perhaps for the sounds of distant gunfire or the tramp of feet returning to try the ways of reason once again.
Smith wandered about and read the noticeboards and the plaques on the walls. He knew that parts of the building had been used as an operations centre by MI5 during the troubles, but there was no commemoration of that irony. Perhaps there had been once but it had been removed to avoid offending some members’ sensibilities. As he walked and stood and read, he thought about the next move. He could approach Quinn in three ways – which one would prove most productive? He could be himself, Detective Sergeant Smith – no need to mention which particular force – and that was usually intriguing enough to get face-to-face with people. He could be Christopher Colgate, businessman, hoping to encourage the export of coffins from the constituency of Mr Quinn, MLA, which was… There must something here to tell him that. Or he could be Stuart Reilly, an acquaintance from the good old days, who just happened to be in town.
At an information point headed ‘The Current Assembly’ was a stand with a screen and a keyboard. Smith scrolled down until he found what he was looking for – details of the current members of the legislative assembly. Then he scrolled again towards the end of the alphabetic list and found him: Lorcan Quinn MLA, and then ‘Junior Minister, Policing and Justice’. Really? He checked again, making absolutely certain that the position of responsibility was held by the member for Lower Falls, but it was so. Maybe the explosives in the boot of the car now weighed closer to one hundred pounds. A minister for justice?
Clicking on the name took him to a personal profile. There was a photograph, and Smith would have recognised him from it but perhaps only because he had seen him from time to time on the television news bulletins, not speaking but one of the suited figures that are always in the background, smiling or solemn according to the occasion. It was a sharp but handsome face, a little younger than one might have expected, but then Quinn was no age when he had taken command of the cell, and time and success had been kind to him, or at least to the public face of him.
Smith read the rest of the profile. It was bland enough, full of the usual superficial words about a new age for his country, a sharing of power and responsibility, putting behind us the divisions of the past and looking forward to a united and prosperous future together. Yes, Smith could imagine all that coming naturally enough from Quinn, and he could imagine how well it went down with people desperate for change. Quinn’s history – some of it – was well-known, and his membership of Sinn Fein before it became politically respectable, when it was in effect the high command of the IRA, had never been disputed. But Quinn could say, probably with some honesty, that when he along with the rest of the country had had to make the choice between the bomb and the ballot box, he had chosen the ballot box. Lorcan Quinn could say with some justification that the rest should be history.
Two o’clock – two hours before the building would close for the weekend. Smith walked away from the information point; he had more than enough information. From one of the great windows on the south side of the building was a view of the grounds sloping away, the spacious and beautifully manicured grounds that represented in some way the hopes of the city and the country. Here was order and civilisation made visible. He had read that somewhere, something about the cultural significance of gardens through the ages of mankind… And it seemed to be working, here in Belfast. He thought about the vibrancy one could feel in the city, about Diarmuid Kelly setting up a new technology business, and then he had to ask whether this was the right thing – being here and planning to confront one of its leaders with his deeds of three decades ago. In a normal investigation, the thought would never had occurred to him, but now he had to examine for a moment just how much of this was personal. To what extent was he now using the O’Neills again? Was he using their loss to confront his own demons? If so, he should walk away now.
If it had been solely about what happened to Brann, he might have done so. The family would accept that his finding and speaking face-to-face with two of the men potentially involved – McCain and O’Dell – was effort enough on his part, possibly more than enough. If he went back to them now and said, I have tried and I cannot find him for you, they would understand. It would be done then, and he could go home. But now it was also about Aidan Quinn, something that he could never have foreseen when he began this. That was abou
t as personal as it gets. It was about a truth so close to him that even now it cast a long shadow in the strange lamp-light of his dreams.
‘May I ask who is calling?’
Lorcan Quinn’s secretary was English, but more to the point, she had asked a very good question – now he had to decide.
‘Stuart Reilly.’
‘And are you a constituent, Mr Reilly?’
Well, yes he was, somewhere and of somebody’s, so he could have answered yes – but his philosophy was well-known to his team; never lie unless you absolutely have to do so.
‘No, not of Mr Quinn’s.’
‘I see. May I ask what your inquiry is about, Mr Reilly?’
‘It’s a personal matter.’
‘Oh. I’m afraid you’ve come through on his business line.’
‘Yes, I realise that, but it’s the only number I have. And I don’t imagine that you are able to give me a personal number for him.’
‘No, I can’t do that, Mr Reilly.’
Smith was still by the window. Stormont had its complement of pigeons and they performed a fly-past. A handful of people were standing on the gravelled paths, taking photographs of the building. Smith wondered whether he would appear as a tiny figure, just a face looking out at them.
The woman said, ‘If it’s a personal matter, you could email or write to Mr Quinn. The addresses are on the parliament’s website.’
‘Thank you, but I’m only here in Belfast for a day or two. Can you tell me whether Mr Quinn is in the building this afternoon? I’m in Stormont myself, you see.’
He was beginning to get her attention now.
‘No. I’m afraid that I cannot divulge that information either.’
‘Can you divulge why you cannot divulge that?’
‘It’s a security matter, sir.’
‘I see. But the members’ attendance at the parliament during a session are a matter of public record, aren’t they?’
In This Bright Future Page 15
