Buried

by Graham Masterton

  *

  She had a shower and dressed again in her black trousers and grey blouse. She always carried clean underwear in her tote bag because she never knew when she would unexpectedly have to stay out overnight.

  While she was putting on her make-up in the bathroom mirror she thought that there was nothing more poignant than a single toothbrush, standing in a tumbler.

  ‘What can I fix you to eat?’ Alan asked her when she came out of the bathroom. ‘I have pizza in the freezer. Or I can beat up some eggs and make you a cheese omelette. I’m renowned throughout Ulster for my cheese omelettes.’

  ‘Pizza would be grand,’ said Katie. ‘That’s what I always have when I’m too tired to cook.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Pizza it is. We can catch some shut-eye then, but we’ll have to take it in turns.’

  ‘Well, that solves that moral dilemma,’ said Katie.

  Alan took hold of her shoulders and gave her a kiss. ‘More like immoral dilemma.’ He smiled. Then he pointed at the blue car icon on the mapping plan and said, ‘Quilty, you bastard, if you move so much as one inch before I’ve had something to eat I’ll clean your clock when I see you, so I will. Your own father won’t know you – not that he ever did.’

  *

  Alan slept first, fully dressed except for his shoes, while Katie kept herself awake by watching television with the volume turned right down and her laptop open on the coffee table right beside her.

  After a while she stood up to stretch her legs and look through the books in Alan’s bookcase. Most of them were dog-eared paperback thrillers, Clive Cussler and James Patterson, but there were two or three hardbacks on Irish history and even Hunger Strike by Danny Morrison. Hunger Strike was an anthology by various writers about the dirty protests and hunger strikes by republican prisoners in the Maze prison in the 1970s, which struck Katie as an unusual book for a former PSNI officer to have on his shelves. Perhaps he had wanted to see the Troubles from both points of view.

  There was also a photograph of a dark-haired woman in an oval silver frame. She was quite pretty, but wistful. Katie looked at the back of the frame, but there was nothing written there, so there was no indication of who she was. Alan had said that he and his wife, Alison, had nearly torn each other to shreds, so was it likely to be her?

  Alan had set his alarm for 3 a.m., and when it buzzed she heard him stir himself and groan. After a few moments he came shuffling into the living room, blinking and scratching the back of his neck.

  ‘Your turn,’ he said. ‘But I pray to God you don’t have anything like the nightmares I’ve just been having.’

  ‘No, I think I’d rather keep my eyes open,’ said Katie. ‘It’s going to be daylight before we know it and if I go to sleep now I’ll be wrecked when I wake up.’

  ‘In that case I’ll make us some coffee.’

  When he came back with two mugs of espresso, Katie said, ‘I see you have Danny Morrison’s book on the hunger strikes.’

  ‘I bought it when it first came out. I thought, “know your enemy”.’

  ‘You don’t think of them as your enemy now, do you?’

  ‘It’s still hard not to. Our next-door neighbour, Tommy, was a prison warder and he was shot one day when he went out shopping with his five-year-old daughter.’

  ‘So, what do you think? Are we forgetting or are we just pretending to forget?’

  ‘If you’re right about Bobby Quilty, then we’re not even pretending. Do you know how many interfaces we have in Belfast?’

  ‘Fifty? Sixty? I know it’s quite a few.’

  ‘Ninety-nine, even today. What kind of people in a so-called civilized city need concrete walls and locked gates and barbed wire to keep them apart?’

  Katie was on the verge of asking Alan about the woman in the photograph when there was an insect-like click from the mapping plan on her laptop. It was 5.11 a.m. and although the sky was cloudy and overcast it was growing light outside. Bobby Quilty’s pickup was moving to the end of Dunboyne Park and turning round. It came out on to Highcairn Drive and then turned into Springfield Road, heading east towards the city centre.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Alan, reaching under the couch to retrieve his shoes. ‘He’s on his way!’

  Katie slipped on her shoes, too, and then stood up to clip on her holster and tug on her short black jacket. She picked up her laptop and the two of them left the flat and hurried down the stairs.

  They ran across to Katie’s car and climbed in. As soon as she had fastened her seat belt Katie opened her laptop and said, ‘He’s just turned right on to Cupar Way. Any idea where he might be headed?’

  ‘Sandy Row, somewhere like that. Hardcore loyalist territory, anyway.’

  Mother of God, thought Katie. Bobby Quilty’s actually fallen for it. She didn’t know whether to be elated or terrified.

  Forty-three

  Bobby Quilty’s pickup turned right on Blythe Street and then into Felt Street in the Blackstaff ward. It went a third of the way along Felt Street and stopped.

  ‘He’s in Felt Street,’ said Katie. She waited for two more five-second clicks and then said, ‘He hasn’t moved. That looks like his final destination.’

  ‘Felt Street is totally loyalist,’ said Alan. ‘There’s more Union flags hung up there than washing.’

  ‘How long is it going to take us to get there?’

  ‘Ten minutes, if I put my foot down.’

  ‘Okay then, put your foot down. He’s still hasn’t moved.’

  They crossed over the Lagan again. Because it was so early there was hardly any traffic in the city centre apart from a street-sweeper and two or three buses with pasty-faced shift-workers staring listlessly out of their windows. It took them less than eight minutes to reach Felt Street, a long red-brick terrace, and as soon as they turned the corner they saw Bobby Quilty’s pickup.

  Alan pulled in behind a white builder’s van and parked. Katie opened the glovebox and handed him one of the black balaclava helmets and the SIG Sauer automatic.

  He checked the gun’s magazine and then said, ‘Okay. So what’s the plan of action?’

  ‘There is no plan of action, except that once we see Quilty, we have to neutralize him before he has a chance to use his phone.’

  ‘“Neutralize” meaning—?’

  ‘Make him drop his phone and any weapon that he might have on him, although in my experience he’s not usually armed. It’s his minions who carry the firearms.’

  ‘And if he refuses?’

  ‘Alan, I haven’t given you that gun for the fun of it.’

  ‘Whatever you say. Let’s do it, then, shall we? But for the love of God, Katie, be careful, will you? I’ve already attended one too many funerals.’

  She held out her hand and he squeezed it tight. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Showtime.’

  They pulled on their black balaclavas. Alan looked at Katie and said, ‘Holy cow! I thought I was afeard of you before. You should see yourself now. Hallowe’en Part Two!’

  They climbed out of the car and walked side by side along Felt Street. There were Union flags hanging outside almost every house and even from the lamp posts. There was no wind, though, none at all, and they hung down limply under a sky as grey as human ashes.

  One of Bobby Quilty’s men was standing outside the house where his pickup was parked. He had a shaven head and a tight white T-shirt which emphasized his body-builder’s muscles. Katie took out her revolver, but the man had his back to them as they quickly and quietly approached, so he didn’t see them until they had almost reached the metal garden gate.

  ‘Hey – what the feck—?’ he began, but Katie pointed her gun directly at his face and said, ‘Shut your bake. Not a sound. Get inside.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said get inside. Go. But no – don’t put your hands up. Just walk in normal.’

  The maroon-painted front door was already half open and the overhead light in the hallway was on. The shaven-headed man pushed the doo
r open wider and stepped inside. Katie followed him, with Alan close behind. Alan had cocked his automatic and was holding it up in both hands.

  The hallway was narrow with a floral carpet and gilt-framed prints of flowers on the walls. On the right-hand side there was a steep staircase, and down at the end of the hallway two open doors, the left-hand door leading to the living room and the right-hand door leading to the kitchen. Katie was about to ask the shaven-headed man where the Big Feller was when she heard Bobby Quilty’s distinctive voice coming from the living room. She could also smell cigarette smoke.

  ‘—but now look at the three of you, wee men!’ Bobby Quilty was saying. ‘Not so fecking scary now, are you?’

  Katie prodded the shaven-headed man in the back with the muzzle of her revolver. ‘Go on. In you go.’

  The shaven-headed man glanced over his shoulder at her and it was obvious that for all of his muscular bulk he was frightened – probably more of Bobby Quilty than of her. He had a single gold earring and although his T-shirt was very white he smelled of stale sweat.

  ‘Are you dee-efff, man?’ said Alan. ‘Get yourself in there before the lady makes a hole in you.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ called Bobby Quilty. ‘Murtagh, is that you? Who’s that out there with you? Is that the kids back already?’

  The shaven-headed man went reluctantly in through the living-room door. Katie went in after him and then shoved him hard between the shoulder blades with the heel of her left hand. He staggered forward two or three steps and that allowed her to step smartly to one side of him and point her revolver directly at Bobby Quilty. Alan came in close behind her, although he still kept his gun raised, James Bond-style, ready to point it at anybody who looked like a threat.

  ‘What in the name of God—?’ said Bobby Quilty. He was standing in front of the brown-tiled fireplace with the back of his cannonball head reflected in the mirror behind him. He was wearing a baggy cream jacket and drooping blue jeans, and a shirt with camels and pyramids and desert sunsets all over it. There was a cigarette stuck to his lower lip, and as he spoke the long ash on the end of it dropped on to the carpet.

  A mock-onyx coffee table had been picked up and was now perched on top of the living-room couch, because the space had been needed for the three men who were sitting back to back in the middle of the floor. The first man was bald and beefy-shouldered, with a broken nose. The second was thin, with a wild mess of grey hair and hollow cheeks. The third was spotty and young, with a straggly black moustache. The older man was wearing green-and-white-striped flannelette pyjamas, but the other two had on nothing but underpants – large white Y-fronts for the man with the broken nose, and pink boxer shorts for the spotty boy.

  Katie could see that all three men had their hands fastened behind them with nylon wrist restraints, the same kind of PlastiCuffs that the Garda used. In between them, behind their backs, there was a battered black briefcase, standing on its end.

  Another of Bobby Quilty’s men was sitting in an armchair by the window, with his legs crossed, also smoking. His hair was bright orange and it had been cut short so that it stuck up like a scrubbing brush. His face was rat-like, with icy blue eyes and protruding front teeth.

  Bobby Quilty was holding up his mobile phone. Katie said, ‘Drop it, Bobby. Drop the phone.’

  ‘Or you’ll do what, whoever you are, wee doll? Shoot me?’

  ‘I said drop the phone.’

  Bobby Quilty looked down at the phone as if he were surprised to see it. ‘Ach, there might be a bit of a problem with that.’

  ‘I’ll give you till three. Drop it.’

  ‘Just hold your horses and listen,’ said Bobby Quilty. ‘The problem is that we’ve paid these three fellers a visit this morning to settle a score. These are the Crothers – Sam Crothers, he’s the baldy one, Stephen Crothers, the one who looks like a bomb went off in a scouring-pad factory, and young Kenny MacClery, who’s a nephew.’

  ‘I don’t care who they are,’ Katie repeated. ‘Drop the phone.’

  Bobby Quilty raised his left hand like the pope giving a benediction. ‘I asked you to hold your horses and hear me out. These three fellers have done my family a desperate injustice and because of that they have to be punished for it. An eye for an eye and all that. That case you see in between them happens to contain 450 grams of C4, as well as more than a hundred three-inch nails. The detonator that can set off that C4 is activated by guess what, wee doll?’

  He held up his mobile phone and grinned at her. ‘If I drop it, then ba-doom! These three fellers, as well as the rest of us here in this room – well, we’ll all end up as pasty filling.’

  ‘In that case, lay the phone gently down on the floor and step away from it.’

  ‘Or what? You’ll shoot me? And what do you think will happen if you shoot me? I might press the key that sets off the bomb, out of spite. Or maybe I’ll just drop my phone on the floor. Whichever it is, ba-doom!’

  Katie guessed that the chances of Bobby Quilty’s phone setting off an explosion if he simply dropped it on to the floor were infinitesimal, if not zero. All the same, she didn’t know exactly what kind of connection had been set up between his phone and the detonator in the bomb – if it really was a bomb.

  ‘Lay the phone down on the floor, gently,’ said Katie.

  ‘Why?’ Bobby Quilty retorted. ‘What the feck has any of this got to do with you, any road? Who are you? Don’t tell me the Sandy Row Women’s Wombles are back in business.’

  For nearly half a minute, nobody moved and nobody spoke, and with every second that passed the tension in the room racked up higher. Bobby Quilty continued to stare at Katie with contempt, while his three handcuffed victims in the middle of the room looked up at her in desperation. The man with the orange hair sat in the same casual position, with his legs crossed, but now his pose was rigid and although a ribbon of smoke was still rising from his cigarette he made no attempt to smoke it. The shaven-headed man in the white T-shirt moved, but only to take two cautious steps backwards – as if that would make any difference if it was a bomb and it really did explode.

  Katie couldn’t see Alan because he was standing too close behind her, but she could hear him breathing hard and quick. In fact, he sounded almost like a pole-vaulter hyping himself up for his run towards the bar.

  ‘Meara will be back very soon, with the girls,’ said Stephen Crothers in a voice that was little more than a croak. ‘You can’t harm them. They’re innocents. Whatever you do to us, you have to spare Meara and the girls.’

  ‘Oh, like you spared the Doherty children?’ said Bobby Quilty.

  ‘That was different. That was a long-standing debt that had to be paid. We thought the account would be settled for good after that.’

  ‘Well, you thought wrong, didn’t you, wee man?’ Bobby Quilty retorted. ‘Those were relatives of mine that you did for, very close relatives, and nobody lays a finger on any member of my family without suffering for it. You – look at the three of you, you miserable friggers. Thought you’d make history, did you? Well, you will, I swear to God, but it won’t be in the way you thought you would. There’ll six coffins all right, so there will, but they won’t know which bit to put in which. They might just as well bury you in soup kettles after what’s going to happen to you.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to them,’ said Katie. ‘You’re going to put down that phone and I’m going to call the police.’

  Bobby Quilty suddenly frowned. He took the cigarette off his lip and looked at Katie with his eyes narrowed.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s only fecking you.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s you. Detective Superintendent Maguire. I thought I recognized that Corky whine on you. I’m right, amptnah? What in the name of Jesus do you think you’re playing at?’

  ‘Holy shite,’ said the orange-haired man in the armchair. ‘You’re having a laugh, aren’t you? She’s that peeler you was talking abo
ut?’

  Katie dragged off her balaclava and stuffed it into her pocket. ‘Well done, Mr Quilty. I was going to tell you who I was in just a moment, anyway, before I arrest you for making a threat to kill and possession of explosives with intent to endanger life.’

  ‘This is Belfast, wee doll, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ said Bobby Quilty. ‘This isn’t Cork.’

  ‘That makes no difference. I still have the power to arrest you here and I’m sure the PSNI will be delighted to assist me in taking you in and bringing charges against you.’

  ‘I don’t fecking believe this,’ said Bobby Quilty. ‘You’ve set me up here, haven’t you? You’ve only gone and fecking set me up. And who’s that knobhead with you?’

  Alan pulled off his balaclava, too. ‘Reck me, do you, Bobby? It’s been a long time.’

  Bobby Quilty slapped his hand against his forehead. ‘I don’t fecking believe this! This is like some kind of fecking bad dream! Detective Inspector Alan Harte, as was! Harte the Fart, that’s what we used to call you! All wind and no action!’

  ‘Alan,’ said Katie. ‘Call for backup, would you? And tell them we’ll need bomb disposal, too.’

  ‘Hey, now then, that’s enough of that,’ said Bobby Quilty, and now his tone was deadly serious. ‘You and I have an understanding, Detective Superintendent Maguire, don’t we? If I was you, I’d turn around and walk out of here and say no more about what you’ve seen here, ever, because if you don’t, you know what the consequences will be, don’t you?’

  He held up his phone again. ‘I have only to call my pal Ger and even if I don’t say a single word he’ll know why I’ve called him and he’ll know exactly what to do.’

  ‘You’re not getting away with this any longer, Bobby,’ said Katie. ‘Alan, make that call, will you, please?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, Detective Inspector Harte the Fart,’ Bobby Quilty warned him. ‘I don’t know if Detective Superintendent Maguire here has, like, apprised you of the arrangement that she and me have between us. But you push just one button on that phone of yours and I’ll be pushing one on mine – the one button that tells my pal Ger to do for two good friends of hers.’