Quinn said, ‘You seem very definite about the number of shots you fired.’
‘You know why. We were issued with six rounds – that was the standard. You soon learned to count them if you had to fire.’
‘So you had one left now?’
‘Yes.’
As far as Smith knew, Quinn had no legal training. He had never been a lawyer but he would have made a good one.
‘Why didn’t you fire twice, to be certain?’
‘There was no need. He went down immediately.’
Quinn seemed to have himself perfectly under control, now that it had been said aloud.
‘One bullet remaining, and that one was for you, yes?’
There was no need to answer that. Members of the British army and anyone suspected of undercover work or of being informers were routinely tortured before they were executed – to be taken as both would have meant a grisly end indeed.
‘What did you do then?’
‘I went over to him – it was clear that he had come there on his own. I checked for a pulse but couldn’t find one. He died instantly, as far as I could tell.’
‘One shot, in the heart?’
‘You already know all this. That’s how you found him, or how he was when someone else brought him to you. I’ve seen the post mortem report this week, for the first time. If you take offence at what I’m going to say now, rest assured it’s intended: I showed your brother more respect when he died than you did.’
There was no fist thrown towards him or smashed down onto the table, no cursing, not even a blaze of anger. Quinn simply accepted it, and Smith felt his own temper rise momentarily, as when the air moves over molten metal and turns it white.
‘For God’s sake, man. You used your own brother’s body to fake a hit by the UDA. You had someone fire shots into it, and then you dumped him on the street for children to find? Or did you do all that yourself? And then you stood by your mother and father at the funeral…’
Quinn could see and hear the anger, and Smith knew that the Irishman would be looking for a way to use it against him. He breathed then, consciously, diaphragm first and then the chest, two, three, four times.
Quinn said slowly and clearly, as if enunciating for some hidden microphone, ‘Sergeant, you are making some wild and unfounded allegations here.’
‘I’ll give you half of that. They sound wild because it’s almost unbelievable that anyone could do such a thing. Unfounded? Not so much. I made and signed full statements at the time, and they will still exist in a vault somewhere. It’s contemporaneous evidence, and it carries a lot of weight when matters are reviewed long after the event. Put those statements alongside the coroner’s report into your brother’s death and someone will have a problem with it, believe me.’
‘Are you making a threat there?’
‘No. It’s a promise.’
‘What happened to you and me going our separate ways?’
‘What happened to Brann O’Neill?’
That smile again, the politician’s smile, as if he had somehow manoeuvred the conversation to this point.
‘Oh, I see. You’re going to blackmail me.’
‘Call it what you will. I see it as doing a deal with the devil.’
‘This isn’t just about your friend, the gay one, is it? You were sweet on one of the sisters, I seem to recall.’
Quinn would now imply a counter threat, nothing obvious, nothing that could be interpreted as such even if the conversation had been recorded. Smith did not answer.
‘Catriona, was it? Long, dark hair. A real beauty.’
The two policemen had wandered away but had now returned. They stood and watched the people who were watching the café.
Smith said, ‘We’ve been here long enough. The deal is simple. You stay away from them – nobody else rings up or pays them a visit. That’s for good. If they ever tell me that they’re getting any sort of grief, the deal that you and I are going to do is over. You tell me where they can find their brother. If he’s there, I go home; if he isn’t, I don’t. If you send any more Tommy Blakes, make sure that they get lucky. If they don’t, I’m going to drag the next one into the nearest police station and the inspector in charge will have either the best or the worst day of his career.’
‘Are ye done?’
‘Not quite.’
‘What else?’
‘Two things. First, I’m sorry about your brother. Second, where is Brann O’Neill?’
Chapter Nineteen
When Quinn had said that he did not know, Smith thought that he had probably told the truth – it was, in fact, the answer that he had anticipated. He had said himself then, maybe so but you know a man who does, and probably two or three of them. It was plain that although Quinn was a Catholic, he was not going to make confession as Smith had done – he still had too much to play for, too much to defend.
If he had done so, Smith would have asked whether Brann was alive on the Saturday after he had been taken, and whether he had been killed – murdered – as an act of revenge for the death of Aidan Quinn. That was the most likely sequence of events, and somehow it placed more weight on his own shoulders. Indirectly, and in saving himself, he might have caused the loss of another’s life – of someone who had had no interest in the cause and the history, someone who only wanted to learn how to preserve and improve the lives of others. The IRA often snatched local people to threaten and frighten them but they usually let them go. To take and then murder a member of the O’Neill family was something else entirely. Smith was certain that it was linked to the shooting of Aidan Quinn.
When Lorcan Quinn stood up, he had made no promises; he had said very little. There was a perfunctory goodbye and then he was walking away through the empty café. Smith watched him go, and then he looked down at the blueberry muffins. He was hungry but taking a bite now seemed inappropriate. He picked up the plate and took them to the counter, the little parcel in his other hand and his stick under his arm.
‘Could I trouble you for a bag for these? They’re much too good to waste.’
Lorraine was frowning as she reached under the top.
‘That’s some fine company you’re keeping. I’m not surprised you had no appetite.’
‘I assure you it was business and not pleasure.’
Using a pair of silver tongs, she transferred the muffins from the plate to a paper bag, and then she folded the corners down with a practised hand.
‘I thought it might be. It didn’t seem like the friendliest of conversations.’
He had looked around at the café then and said, ‘Sorry about all this. I wanted somewhere that he wouldn’t feel too at home. You more than delivered that but it’s cost you some business.’
She waved that away.
‘They’ll be back here in a minute or two, wanting to know what that was all about. I’ll make it back and more.’
To her credit, she did not ask what it had all been about. Smith said, ‘Nevertheless’, opened his wallet and placed a twenty pound note on the counter. When she began to protest, he threatened to put the muffins in a bin instead of eating them, and when she laughed, he thanked her again and walked out into the early afternoon sunshine. The little group of spectators had fallen silent and looked away from him.
He found his way to the Waterfront park and sat on the same bench that he had used when he first met Diarmuid Kelly in Belfast. The phone signal was good here, and after he had checked it, he placed the phone on the bench beside him and ate one of the blueberry muffins. He looked at the river, at the joggers and cyclists, at the couples, at the couples with children, at the dog-walkers and the elderly out on their own, and then he ate the other blueberry muffin. One was not enough but two were a little too much – life is rarely straightforward, he reflected.
Even if Quinn intended to offer him something, it would take time. There would be phone calls, possibly a visit or two, and then the information would need to be prised out of someone who would al
most certainly, after thirty years, be unwilling to give it up. The sequence of events had to be something like that – Quinn would never have been so reckless as to associate himself directly with a burial.
It was possible, too, that Quinn intended to offer him nothing at all, to call his bluff. They both knew that there would be no prosecution, that no case could ever be made against Quinn for what had happened to his brother – equally, they both knew that that was not the point. There would be the gossip, the rumours, the slowly spreading stain once again and the recurring questions about whether a Provo could really become a politician; on some matters Quinn had become the face of his party but they would drop him in a moment if there was a hint of genuine contamination, and that was what Smith was gambling on now.
After an hour, he took a stroll along the river, heading south. Lots of waterside redevelopment just as in Kings Lake – executive apartments overlooking the water, and even some miniature landing stages where some of them had moored boats. He thought about Diarmuid Kelly then. Presumably he, Smith, would have heard something if there had been a problem last night – he was more and more convinced that whoever had dealt with Tommy Blake, it was not Brann O’Neill’s nephew. A shame in a way - he would have quite liked it to have been. But, he told himself a little later still, and standing at the end of a jetty, I have to set some sort of time limit on this waiting; if I’ve heard nothing by nine o’clock tomorrow morning, I’ll go and watch The Star Of The County Down. No doubt Jackie Fitzgerald is a perfectly pleasant sort of man if you can get him on his own.
At half past five he bought a prawn cocktail sandwich from a delicatessen and made his way back to his room at Mrs Greene’s – tonight he had no stomach for a full meal in a restaurant. It was evenly balanced, just the last two men standing in a game of poker, and he would not have bet even a fifty pence piece on the final outcome. The landlady was surprised to see him, and still more surprised when he said that he might need one more night in her fine establishment. That much she could do, she said, but after that she was fully booked for a week, what with the music festival and the Irish school holidays beginning.
‘To be honest, Mr Colgate, I had no idea that coffins was such a business.’
‘And you are right to be surprised, Mrs Greene. Someone once said that death’s the end of all but it is not so for some of us. For some of us, a death is only the beginning.’
A note of portentousness seemed to have crept into his words, and Mrs Greene looked vaguely alarmed, as if she had heard those words from the pulpit rather than from the doorway of her lounge.
‘Nevertheless,’ he continued, ‘there is a possibility that I will be able to conclude the business tomorrow. Obviously I will let you know as a matter of urgency, and should you refuse another booking on my behalf, I will see that you don’t lose out, whether or not I do need the room. How does that sound?’
Well enough, it seemed – she even managed a little blush at the English gentleman’s considerate manner towards herself and her bank balance, and so when he said that there was one more small service she might be able to do for him, she was quick to ask what it might be.
‘Would you happen to have a copy of that old-fashioned thing, the Yellow Pages, Mrs Greene?’
After forty minutes and three phone calls, he had found the very man that he needed and the deal was done. It would be small compensation if he had failed in the other matter, the one that had brought him here in the first place, but it would be something. When his phone buzzed and tinkled with a message not five minutes later, he assumed that it was some sort of confirmation of what he had just arranged – and then, when he read what was on the screen, he frowned because it made no sense. It was a jumble of numbers and letters. Mostly numbers. He counted them – fifteen. His finger had been hovering over the delete symbol; now it slowly moved away to a very safe distance as he realised what he was looking at. He put down the phone carefully as if jarring it might make these numbers disappear, and then he reached for the Alwych and made an exact copy of the numbers on a brand new page. He checked three times that he had transcribed them accurately. Finally, he went to recents in his call list and pressed one near to the top of it.
Diarmuid Kelly’s voice answered.
Smith said, ‘Hello, it’s me.’
‘What’s up? Are you OK?’
Now why would that be the first thing that Kelly asked? Smith made a mental note to think about that when this call was done – first things first.
‘I’ve got something you need to see.’
‘What is it?’
‘Best not to say on the phone. You need to see it.’
‘When? Is it urgent?’
‘Probably.’
He could hear Kelly speaking to someone, shielding the phone, and a woman’s voice answering.
‘We’re driving, just coming into the city now.’
‘If you’re driving, you shouldn’t have picked up the phone.’
‘Jesus, you’re worse than my mother! I didn’t – Mairead’s driving. Where are you?’
So he doesn’t know or he’s keeping up a good pretence of it. Smith calculated quickly whether it would better to ask Kelly to come alone and concluded that at this point it made no difference. He was certain that by now that Mairead would know the whole story. Still, it would be safer to keep them away from Mrs Greene’s, where someone had been watching him on at least two occasions.
‘If you come to the corner of Albert Street and the A501, where you dropped me before, I’ll be waiting there.’
Mairead McCain was tiny and blonde and a proper handful, as Smith’s own mother might have said. Whatever Diarmuid Kelly had already told her, her expression informed Smith that she would be making her own mind up about all this, and not until it suited her.
Smith got into the rear seats and said hello. When Kelly turned around to return the greeting, it was easy to see why the girl was driving – his left hand was bandaged and the outer three fingers were immobilised. Smith stared at it for a long time and then lifted the same look to Kelly’s face.
Kelly said, ‘A paper cut.’
‘A nasty one, by the look of it. Must have been at least 120 gsm. Many stitches?’
‘A few. Fortunately I know a nurse.’
The girl was watching Smith in the mirror, and he could see that this was not the moment to try and make friends. He looked back at Kelly.
‘We’ll talk about that another time. This is what I wanted you to see.’
He handed over the phone and its message. Kelly studied with the same frown that had at first contorted Smith’s own brow, and then he turned the phone towards his girlfriend.
Kelly said to Smith, ‘What the hell is that?’
Mairead took the phone, looked more closely and then said, ‘GPS coordinates.’
There was a silence. Not much traffic on the main road, and the light over it was the wavering, dusty sort that one associates more with late August than with June. If this keeps up, thought Smith, it’s going to be a long, hot summer.
After a time, Kelly said, ‘My God. Is this it?’
Smith said, ‘It could be.’
‘Where did it come from?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve checked the number – it’s not from a phone that has been used to contact me before. I think I know why it’s come now, but I don’t know how or from whom. Not yet.’
‘And I’m guessing that’s all you’ll be saying on the matter.’
‘It’s safer that way.’
The girl handed the phone back to Diarmuid and then turned to look at Smith directly for the first time.
She said, ‘Oh yes. Let’s keep everyone as safe as possible from now on.’
‘Mairead – we can do all that again later on, if that’s what you want.’
Kelly’s tone was flat and matter of fact. The girl glared at Smith for a few more moments but said nothing more. It was quiet again – the next move had to come from Diarmuid, and Smith was not su
re what it might be.
‘OK. We’re going to the flat now. I’m going to ring Helen Reece but I don’t have her number in my phone which is stupid of me. She always says we can ring twenty four seven, so now we’ll see. I’m not telling them at home until I know how this is going to be handled.’
He looked directly at Smith then, and received a nod of agreement.
Kelly said, ‘You’re welcome to come along with us now – or I can call you when I’ve some idea what happens tomorrow.’
Smith thought for a moment about how nice it would be to see the young couple in the home that they had set up together, to share a proper cup of tea and chat about how the O’Neills would be able to move on with their lives if this was almost over, and then he looked into the rear view mirror and saw that Mairead McCain was daring him to say yes.
‘No, you get on with it and let me know. I need to start winding up the operation here. I’ve probably over-stayed my welcome.’
He opened the rear door and got out – the girl started the car as soon as the door had closed. Kelly looked up at him almost apologetically and said, ‘Thank you.’
‘Too soon for that. Still a long way to go, most likely.’
‘Oh, aye, maybe. But I’ve got the feeling, you know, so… I’ll call you later on.’
And then the car was pulling away, and Smith was standing alone on the corner, realising that in all the excitement he had come out without his stick. Isn’t the mind a remarkable thing? It hadn’t hurt at all until he noticed that, and now he had to limp a little all the way back to his room.
As it turned out, there wasn’t very far to go at all. Kelly rang him at just after ten o’clock.
‘The woman was as good as her word. She’s been making calls tonight, and now she’s rung me back for the last time. There are details to be finalised in the morning but she thinks she can get them to have a look tomorrow afternoon.’
In This Bright Future Page 22
