Yield Up the Dead

by Derek Fee

  ‘Are we ready to start?’ Wilson asked as he and Davis joined the group.

  Duane looked in their direction. ‘Just making sure that this boy doesn’t rip up half the bog getting the bodies out of there.’ He bowed to Davis. ‘Chief Superintendent, you honour us with your presence.’

  ‘You’re so full of it, Jack,’ Davis said. ‘Show me the sites.’

  They walked over to the area that had been marked out for digging. The two gravesites were fifty metres apart. The area was relatively flat and covered with moss and various types of grass. In the distance there was a fen and a stand of birch trees.

  ‘We’ll get the bodies up in reasonable condition?’ she asked.

  ‘As long as that arsehole on the JCB follows my instructions,’ Duane said.

  Davis removed a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose.

  ‘You alright,’ Wilson noticed that her eyes were reddening.

  ‘I’m allergic to pollen,’ she said. ‘I took an antihistamine before we set out but the pollen count here must be off the charts.’

  ‘It’s a feature of the raised bog,’ Duane said. ‘We need to get you out of here before it gets worse.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Davis turned and started to walk back towards the Land Rover. ‘I’ve put my hand in the wound. If Nicholson asks, I can say I was here for the start of the digging.’ She turned to Wilson. ‘I’ll take the car to the station and send it back for you.’ She had quickened her pace and they were already at the Land Rover. The driver opened the door for her and she climbed in gratefully.

  The noise of the JCB starting up caused the two policemen to turn together in its direction. It moved slowly towards the first gravesite containing the two bodies.

  ‘How long do you think it’ll take?’

  Duane nodded towards the forensic team. They were busy constructing the frames for two plastic canopies that would be erected over the gravesites when the holes had been dug. ‘If the operator knows his job, those guys will be at work before the morning is out. We’ve done our bit, let’s have a coffee.’

  ‘What were Nicholson and your boss meeting about last night?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘Damned if I know.’ Duane went back to where the forensics team’s van was parked. ‘These “disappeared” cases are very sensitive. They bring back the whole horror of what was done during the “Troubles”. It’s “let bygones be bygones” time. It’s quite possible that there are people who might have been involved in disappearing people who have morphed into politicians.’ He removed a flask from the van, poured two cups of coffee and handed one to Wilson.

  ‘Politics and justice don’t mix.’ Wilson took the coffee and sipped it. ‘This is so good.’

  Duane walked towards the first site and watched the JCB operator at work. ‘He knows his job,’ he said to no one in particular.

  ‘I don’t like it when we’re excluded from conversations.’ Wilson joined him and saw that the hole was already opening. ‘What’s your guy Nolan like?’

  ‘The same as your guy Nicholson, they don’t get there without the help of friends and by having a conscience. You and I are expendable. We’re the fall guys whichever way this ball bounces.’ Duane started to walk away. ‘Just as well they’re makin’ the canopies. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were heading for a downpour.’

  An hour later the heavens opened and the rain came down so solidly that it resembled stair-rods falling from the sky. After all, this was Ireland where you could have all four seasons in one day. The forensics team had already moved their canopy to the sites in order to put it over the holes as soon as the JCB was finished. Wilson and Duane watched the proceedings from the forensics team van since the Land Rover hadn’t yet returned from Belfast. Just before midday, they saw the JCB move back and the forensics team move forward with their canopy. As soon as the canopy was in place, they exited the van and made their way to the first site. As they passed the JCB, the driver alighted.

  ‘Something’s there,’ he said as they passed. ‘I’m off for a fag and a cup of tea.’

  ‘Half an hour,’ Duane said. ‘I want the other site opened as soon as possible.’

  By the time they got to the canopy they were drenched. They entered the white plastic sheeting which covered not only the hole but also the area around it. Rain beat against the roof and sides of the makeshift tent. One of the forensics team was busy making a video recording of the scene while a second was shooting still photographs. They walked forward and looked into the hole. It looked like there was a bundle of filthy rags at the bottom in a pool of mucky water. There was no discernible body shapes just muck-covered lumps. Wilson thought he got a glimpse of very tanned skin sticking out from among the clothes but he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘You can bet your house on that little bugger Keane,’ Duane said. ‘There are two of them alright.’

  ‘How the hell can you tell?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘This isn’t my first dance,’ Duane replied. ‘It’s not going to be pretty when they come up.’

  ‘We need you guys out of here.’ The head of the forensics team was a small middle-aged woman who looked like she could chew nails.

  ‘How soon will you have them up?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘We’ll try to finish before this evening,’ she said. ‘We too have homes to go to. However, we were thoughtful enough to bring arc lights in the van. If we need to work on, we’ve got the gear. But we’ll be trying to avoid it.’

  ‘So we can order a meat wagon for this evening,’ Wilson said.

  ‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have one on site.’ She made a pushing movement with her hands. ‘Now, how about getting out of here and letting us do our work?’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Work began on opening the second gravesite as soon as the JCB operator refreshed himself. The forensics team was working steadily on the first site. Nobody stopped for lunch. Cups of tea were passed around at one o’clock but weren’t allowed to impede progress.

  At two o’clock, the head of the forensics team motioned Wilson and Duane to approach. ‘It’s a man and a woman,’ she said. The rain had abated temporarily and they stood just outside the plastic sheeting. ‘We had to drain off quite a bit of the water to fully expose them. We have cleaned the muck off the bodies. We’re preserving the earth that was around them for examination. Apparently the priority is preparing the bodies for removal. What we want to do is use the JCB to lift the bodies out of the hole. We have stretchers that we can get underneath the bodies but in an effort to preserve as much as possible of whatever evidence there is, we should take them out as gently as possible. How’s progress on the second site?’

  Duane walked across to the second site and motioned the JCB operator to stop. He looked into the hole. It was almost three feet deep. He signalled the JCB operator to continue. ‘We’re about three feet down,’ he said when he re-joined Wilson and the head of the forensics team. ‘It won’t take much longer.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘As soon as he’s through we should be ready to bring the bodies up. We’ll keep them under the canopy until the transport arrives.’ She nodded in the direction of the roadblock. ‘Our friends over there will be anxious to get some shots so we’ll be as discreet as possible. They’ll still be covered in mud so don’t expect to identify them. There’s a woman’s handbag as well. We’ve already bagged it and we’ll take that away with us. Are we clear?’

  Wilson and Duane looked at each other and then nodded.

  Half an hour later the JCB operator moved back from the second site and the forensics team moved forward with the second canopy. The operator walked away in the direction of the forensics van lighting a cigarette as he went.

  ‘We’ll give the poor bastard a break,’ Duane said. ‘He’s done a hell of a job’

  ‘Let’s take a look in the hole.’ Wilson started walking toward the recently set up canopy.

  Earth had been piled up in a large mound just outside the canopy. They entered through a ga
p in the sheeting. The second hole was almost the same size as the first. Wilson looked over the edge and saw the lump of mud at the bottom with pieces of clothing material visible at intervals. He thought he could see a shoulder and the top of an arm but decided that he was making something out of the lump that may not have been there. He looked over at Duane who was examining the hole from the opposite side. “What do you think?’

  ‘It’s a body.’

  This was bizarre. McDevitt’s article had set them off on the search for the body of Alan Evans and so far they had located three bodies. On the one hand, three families would now find closure and the ability to lay their loved ones to rest. On the other, three bodies meant three murder investigations with, if Keane could be believed, very little forensic evidence. A thirty-year-old crime with little or no forensic evidence was not a scenario that he was happy with.

  The transport, in the shape of two ambulances, had arrived and was stationed beside the forensics van. As they had anticipated, the arrival of the ambulances had caused a flurry of activity from the journalistic community. A camera was now mounted on the roof of the BBC van and figures could be seen manning both the UTV and BBC cameras. There would be a shot of Wilson and Duane on the TV news programmes that evening.

  The JCB had been repositioned to assist in bringing up the bodies from the first burial site. As soon as they were up, the head of the forensics team approached Wilson and Duane. She looked at her watch. ‘I think that we’ve made excellent progress but, if you agree, we’d like to continue until we have all the bodies above ground and shipped back to the Royal Infirmary. We’ll be back here tomorrow to go over the site and see if there’s any evidence that might help you find the people that did this.’

  ‘We’ll be here as long as you are,’ Wilson said.

  ‘Then I suggest that we get an ambulance down here to remove the first two bodies.’

  Duane let out a loud whistle and the driver of one the ambulances climbed into his vehicle. He started his engine and rolled slowly over the bog in the direction of the first burial site. Duane indicated that he should park on the side of the canopy out of sight of the journalists. The driver removed two body bags from the rear of his vehicle and handed them to the head of the forensics team who took the bags and disappeared under the canopy. She reappeared ten minutes later and called the driver who opened the rear hatch. Wilson and Duane watched as two members of the forensics team carefully carried the body bags from the canopy and loaded them gently into the rear of the ambulance. Wilson was sure that the TV cameras would have captured at least part of the scene. It would have quite an impact on those who would watch it. It was easy for people to forget the violence, which had been perpetrated in their name, but scenes showing body bags being loaded into ambulances brought a sense of immediacy to events that had been dismissed as mere historical footnotes. The people in the body bags were real and possibly had paid no part in the violence that had marked more than thirty years of the history of the province. They were as innocent as the family sitting in their living rooms before being brutally murdered by a death squad made up of their neighbours. They were as innocent as the bystanders torn to pieces by a bomb. They were the innocent and the dead. And people like him were entrusted with obtaining justice for them. Sometimes it felt like a heavy burden.

  The ambulance pulled away moving slowly over the bog until it reached the road into the bog. It stopped briefly at the roadblock and there was an avalanche of flashes as the photographers tried to get a picture of the contents of the ambulance. The driver increased speed when the barrier was lifted and managed to knock one of the photographers to the ground as it skidded onto the main road.

  The forensics team moved to the second site while Wilson and Duane went back to the van. It was near seven o’clock in the evening when the head of the team exited from the canopy and motioned to them to come forward.

  ‘We’ve cleared away most of the muck,’ she said when they arrived outside the canopy. ‘It looks like a woman but the pathologist will have to confirm. We’ll have the body ready for transport in ten minutes.’

  Duane whistled up the driver of the second ambulance and repeated his instruction to park on the side away from the journalists. Ten minutes later the third body had been loaded into the ambulance and it was on its way out of the bog.

  ‘Good job,’ Wilson said to the head of the forensics team.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But we’re only beginning. We’ll be here all tomorrow and maybe part of the next day depending on what we find. There’s a lot of ground to be gone over.’ She handed Wilson a large plastic evidence bag containing a muddy woman’s satchel. ‘This is the bag we found in the first grave. It might help identify the victim.’

  Wilson took the bag. ‘Additional uniforms are arriving soon to keep the vultures away from the site. Are we done for today?’

  ‘I don’t know about the rest of the team,’ she said. ‘But I’m bone tired. I need a hot bath, a glass of wine and a massage from my auld man.’

  ‘I can relate to that,’ Duane said. ‘We’ve been drenched and dried out. It’ll be a miracle if we don’t catch our death of cold.’

  Wilson and Duane watched the ambulance go through the same gauntlet of photographers as its predecessor. ‘Three bodies,’ Wilson said as they began to walk back towards where their cars were parked. ‘We came here to find Alan Evans and we end up with one male and two female bodies. It looks like we’ve stumbled on someone’s private burial ground.’

  ‘Your problem, my friend.’

  ‘You mean this is the end of our beautiful friendship?’

  Duane smiled. ‘I certainly hope so. But that might not be the opinion of my boss. Nicholson seemed to have something on his mind when he asked Nolan to stay behind. And I don’t think it involved sharing a glass of something or other. I’m going back to Dublin this evening but there’s an even money chance I might be back in some capacity.’

  ‘So you get to spend an evening with the family.’

  Duane took his car keys from his pocket and opened the driver’s side of the car. ‘To do that, I’d have to take a plane for more than twenty-four hours. The former Mrs Duane and my kids currently reside in Auckland.’ He extended his hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure working with you. I hope you find the bastard who put these people in the ground.

  Wilson shook Duane’s hand. ‘It’s not over until it’s over. Safe journey.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Richie Simpson was sitting in the Waves Surf Café on Main Street in Bundoran. On the table in front of him was the detritus of a meal that might be loosely described as dinner. He had spent the day wandering around the small seaside town looking like any other early summer tourist. Bundoran is a holiday town and one of the top centres in the world for surfing. The problem was that Simpson had never spent time as a tourist and he definitely had no interest in surfing. Was this really going to be his future? Pissing around some out-of-the-way hole praying that when he turned a corner or looked behind him he wouldn’t see Davie Best’s ugly mug. He looked at the table with the remains of his meal. This was money out and the only money he had coming in was the dole, and to collect that he would have to go back to Belfast. He took up his bill and went to the cash register. He carefully counted out the exact amount. The girl at the register took the money and glanced at the bowl in front of her that contained the tips for the staff. Simpson saw the look but ignored the bowl. There would be no tipping until his finances were in better shape. That thought caused him to smile. The chances of his financial situation improving were as slim as his chances of staying alive. He was tempted to call the Queen’s Tavern and speak directly to McGreary. Maybe he could convince him that what had happened was an aberration. There was no way he was going to blab to the Peelers. Who was he kidding? McGreary might agree to let him live today, but might wake up one morning and decide that he had made a mistake. Safety in general might be an illusion, but his safety in particular was too import
ant to be left to the whims of people like McGreary and Best. They didn’t like loose ends and that was exactly what he was. He ignored the harsh look of the waitress and left the café. He walked along Main Street in the direction of his digs in Atlantic Way. He turned left onto Promenade Road and bypassed the street containing his B and B. The Atlantic Ocean was directly in front of him. How he wished he could just fly across that ocean and put three thousand miles between him and his current predicament. He sat down on a bench facing the ocean and removed a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket. He unfolded it and looked at the pros and cons he had developed concerning his situation. He knew that sooner or later he was going to have to make a decision and whatever that would be, he would have to live with the consequences. Ever since his father had died and his mother had consigned him and his sister to Social Services, he had been alone. When Robert Nichol and his friends abused him, there had been no one to turn to. Jackie Carlisle had used him for his own benefit and when he was through had discarded him like a used handkerchief. His handlers in British Intelligence had no use for him now that he no longer had access to Carlisle’s secrets. He had a valuable secret but it was valuable only if he could trade it for his safety. He looked again at the paper in his hands. A gust of wind pulled it from his grasp and it hovered in the air before rushing out to sea. Tomorrow morning he would call Superintendent Wilson. It was his only chance of survival.