by Derek Fee
The door shut in his face.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Wilson was suddenly very hungry. He’d had enough of the food in the cafeteria and he wanted to go somewhere where he could have a decent lunch in peace. He needed time to think. It was a fine day, warm but with more than a few puffs of cloud hiding the sun and creating patches of blue sky. He sat in his car, turned on the engine and moved off. Twenty-five minutes later, he arrived outside the Yellow Door Deli on the Lisburn Road. He hadn’t been to the Yellow Door in ages and the decision to go there had been made more by his car than by himself. Or that’s the way it seemed. It was quiet and he found a table outside. He treated himself to a sandwich box and a cup of coffee and thought himself a civilian as he watched the ordinary people of Belfast going about their business. He was almost through his sandwich box and on his second cup of coffee before he allowed himself to reflect on his interview with Karin Faulkner. She had swopped a two-up two-down in central Belfast for a future that included a mansion in an exclusive enclave, a Mercedes 280SL and a wardrobe to match. Not a bad deal! The only bugbear was her former husband. He wasn’t about to change his mind about her potential as a murderer. It was a stretch to think that she could have intercepted her husband on his way back from Downpatrick in an era before mobile phones. Then she would have to shoot him and Bowe before transporting them to Ballynahone, digging a grave, burying them and disposing of the car. It could have happened that way but she would have needed help. Enter Jackie Carlisle. He knew the kind of men who would do a murder like that. Maybe she was simply the paymaster. He was sipping his coffee when his phone rang. He took a quick look at the caller ID. ‘Harry, tell me.’
‘Reid has just finished the autopsy on the young woman.’
‘She was shot in the face with a .22,’ Wilson said.
‘How did you know, boss?’
‘I’m psychic. What about the second woman?’
‘Reid has a lecture so the second woman will be done tomorrow morning.’
‘You know what that means.’
‘I’m back here tomorrow.’
‘Now you’re psychic. I’m heading back to the station. We’ll have a briefing at eighteen hundred. Siobhan should have something on Jennifer Bowe by then.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
It was always evident when an investigation was going well. There was a buzz in the murder squad room when Wilson arrived and he decided to hold the briefing immediately. Otherwise, all information would be circulated before the briefing and the freshness of the responses would be lost.
‘Let’s start with Sammy.’ He looked at Browne.
‘The DNA has been confirmed as a match for the hair I took from Ballygomartin. So, the blood in the warehouse belongs to the same person as the hair. The problem is that we have no direct evidence that the hair is Rice’s.’
‘I think we can conclude that the blood at the warehouse is indeed Sammy’s and that he’s no longer in the land of the living. We have to turn our attention to the CCTV. We need to place McGreary and Best at the warehouse or in its vicinity around the time Sammy disappeared.’
‘Peter and I have been going through the CCTV from the area of the warehouse,’ Browne said. ‘The problem is that there’s a hell of a lot of it. Most of the buildings in the area are industrial so they have all provided footage. That’s good on one side, we have plenty of footage but bad on the other side, we have too much to go through.’
‘Find me McGreary and Best,’ Wilson said. ‘Now for a piece of important, and highly confidential news. I was contacted by Richie Simpson this morning.’ He gave a short briefing on the content of his conversation with Simpson. ‘The Chief Super is presenting the case to the hierarchy in Castlereagh. Richie Simpson in a witness protection programme is going to be a stretch for the powers-that-be.’
‘If I know Richie,’ Peter Davidson said, ‘he’s picturing a witness protection solution that has him sitting by a pool somewhere sipping on a Pina Colada. The truth is that he’ll probably spend the rest of his life roasting his nuts off on a sheep farm somewhere in the middle of Australia.’
They all laughed.
‘Simpson has information that could put McGreary and Best behind bars for a long time,’ Wilson said. ‘If I was about to grass those guys up, I would seriously consider a sheep farm in the centre of Australia as the safest place to be. Simpson is holed up somewhere he considers safe. But he’s not dumb. So he knows nowhere is safe from characters like McGreary and Best. I just hope the Chief Constable has the balls to spend the money. We might be able to place McGreary and Best in the area but Simpson can give us them murdering Rice.’ He turned towards Graham. ‘Harry, the autopsies.’
Graham gave a briefing on his day at the Royal watching Reid working on the man and woman from the first grave. He had handed over the .22 shells taken from the two bodies to FSNI and a ballistics check was being run.
‘Thanks, Harry,’ Wilson said. ‘Siobhan, what do we know about Jennifer Bowe?’
O’Neill’s face reddened as four sets of male eyes stared at her. ‘Absolutely nothing,’ she said simply. ‘She never attended Queen’s University. The student’s card is a fake. I found four Jennifer Bowes with National Insurance numbers but none of them fit our Jennifer Bowe. She was never listed as a missing person. I found a birth certificate for someone who could have been her but it was matched with a death certificate. Jennifer Bowe died aged five in south Armagh.’ Her face reddened further. ‘I’m sorry, boss. I really tried every database.’
There was silence in the room as each member of the team assimilated Siobhan O’Neill’s information.
‘I don’t like it, boss.’ Harry Graham was the first to speak.
‘I know, Harry,’ Wilson said. ‘I’m not too happy myself.’
Browne looked from one to the other. ‘What’s the problem?’
Wilson wrote a question mark after Jennifer Bowe’s name on the whiteboard. ‘Tell him what we don’t like, Harry.’
‘There are several things we don’t like,’ Graham said. ‘Firstly, people with fake identities, especially people with fake identities that have never been on any grid. We also don’t like people who disappear and nobody lists them as missing. And the reason we don’t like any of these things is that they smell like spooks. And where there are spooks investigations can get messed up. You think we have a spook here, boss?’
‘I certainly do, Harry. And I’m worried. When I heard that there was a woman in the car with Evans, if it is Evans, I thought that maybe there might be a sexual motive for their deaths. If the woman was a spook, that theory is out the window. We don’t think the IRA or the UDA were involved and the crime of passion theory is dead. That leaves us with one major question; why the hell did someone put a bullet into the heads of a third division political wannabee and a spook?’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Wilson sat alone in the snug at the Crown. There was a pint of Guinness on the table before him but it was almost untouched. He wasn’t there for the alcohol or the company. He wanted to be alone to think. It was clear that Sammy Rice was dead and that he had been sent on his way by either McGreary or Best, or a combination of both. That meant that the man responsible for the murders of Grant, Malone and O’Reilly would never stand trial. Rice may have been behind the killings but there was no way that he had the nous to set up the operation that had milked government funds. It was somewhat of a consolation that Rice had paid a much higher price for his misdeed than would have been extracted by a court of law. The men who actually did the killing would eventually be brought to book. Big George Carroll would be the star witness against them. Despite some level of justice being achieved, Wilson was left with the feeling that something wasn’t quite right about the whole affair. He had passed the information on Carson Nominees to his colleagues in the Fraud Squad but even the computer geeks there had hit a brick wall in trying to untangle the web that had been created to protect those ultimately behind the corruption. I
t was the problem with white-collar crime; the criminals weren’t the usual dopes. He preferred dealing with the likes of Rice and McGreary. They were honest to God criminals. They didn’t hide behind dummy corporations and offshore accounts. Dragging Baxter and Weir before the courts would see that justice was served. But knowing that the real culprits had escaped would leave him with a bad taste in his mouth. He picked up his pint of Guinness and took a big swallow. He thought about calling Reid. Her lecture would be over by now but she would be tired after a day of cutting and sewing. She would be better left alone. Maybe it was better if he were left alone too. Then there was the Ballynahone business, another multi-dimensional crime. Why couldn’t murder be straightforward? Who was he kidding? Without the challenge of peeling back the layers of the onion he would have given up policing years ago. That was the problem with his crime-of-passion theory for Evans. If Karin Faulkner wanted her husband dead, she would probably have shot him herself. Men and women did it all the time. Burying him and his supposed mistress in Ballynahone bog was a layer of complication that probably wouldn’t have occurred to her. If she’d been the culprit, he would have been planted in a back yard in Belfast. But the real fly in the ointment was Jennifer Bowe, or whatever her name was. Harry was right. Everything pointed to her being some kind of intelligence agent. He’d been a child in the Eighties but he’d read all the books. During the 1970s and Eighties, Northern Ireland had been crawling with British agents from every branch of the security services. Agents from MI5 and MI6 were banging into each other as they tried to recruit operatives from the ranks of the IRA and the UDA. Then there were the covert operations involving assassination and bombing. It was field training for British agents. He could imagine a sort of sub Le Carre world where sophisticated Russian agents were replaced by murderous operatives with code names like “Steakknife”. Someone had dropped Jennifer Bowe into that world and it had led to her receiving a .22 bullet in the face. He wondered what her parents had been told. Whatever it was, it had been pure bullshit. He looked up as the door of the snug was pushed in and Jack Duane’s face came around the corner.
‘I thought I might find you here.’ Duane sat across from Wilson.
‘Goodbye really is the hardest word to say where you’re concerned.’ Wilson smiled and pressed the button for service.
‘Don’t worry there are many places I’d prefer to be other than here.’
‘That begs the question; Why are you here?’ The barman stuck his head through the hatch and Wilson ordered two pints of Guinness.
‘Orders from the big boss: Stay close to this one, Jack. Might involve important people, Jack. Get up the nose of that poor fucker in Belfast, Jack.’
‘You know what they say, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Are you part of the solution, Jack?’
Duane rubbed his forehead. ‘I’d like to think so. What’s been happening since I left?’
The drinks arrived and Wilson paid the barman. He pushed one drink across the table towards Duane. Nicholson and Nolan had buddied up but what did that mean for him? And Duane? He hadn’t yet briefed Davis on the Jennifer Bowe issue so he wasn’t about to give Duane advance information. The autopsies appeared to be safe ground. ‘Reid carried out autopsies on the man and woman from grave one. They were both shot in the face with a .22.’
‘Slainte!’ Duane sipped his drink. ‘So you’re dealing with someone who had been there before. A .22 in the face probably from close range doesn’t leave any doubt about the outcome. We were hoping that it might not involve the paramilitaries but I think that hope is out the window.’
‘So, Jack, you know what we know. Where do we go from here?’
‘I think we both might have a problem.’
‘How so?’ Wilson sipped his drink.
‘Even if it was thirty years ago, my bosses would like to know who might have been involved in murdering Evans. Anything from forensics?’
‘Not yet, looks like you’ve made a trip for nothing.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. I get to spend another evening in your scintillating company.’
‘Are you sure that you’re not part of the intelligence community?’
‘Using intelligence and Garda Siochana in the same phrase is what they call an oxymoron.’
‘You haven’t answered the question.’ Wilson’s face was serious.
‘Come on, Ian. I’m a policeman just like you. OK, my police world is a little more cloak and dagger than yours but we’re both on the side of the angels.’
Wilson finished his drink and stood up. ‘Its been a long day.’
Duane put his hand on Wilson’s arm. ‘Just one for the road, eh!’
‘Not tonight, Jack. I’m sure I’ll see you around.’
Wilson walked through the crowd in the Crown. As he passed, he stared at the faces of the patrons. Were they what they seemed? Was he becoming paranoid? Ninety-nine per cent of people wanted a happy life, a job, a house and a wife and two point four children. It was strange that the other one per cent spent their time looking for ways to screw it up for them?
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Karin Faulkner pushed her plate away and looked into her husband’s face. They were sitting in the dining room of their house in Stormont Wood. They were eating off Limoges porcelain and their cutlery had the mark of the St. Medard factory on it. The carpet beneath their feet was a Persian Isfahan that had cost Karin £10,000. ‘He thinks one of us or both might have killed Alan.’
Robert Faulkner pushed his plate away. Although he hadn’t finished, he suddenly didn’t feel hungry.
‘Did you?’ she asked.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I had nothing to do with it. It was a time when it was dangerous to be involved in politics. Alan should have kept his big mouth shut and he would probably still be around today.’
‘That policeman, Wilson, asked me whether we knew Jackie Carlisle. You were friendly with him at one point.’
‘At one point yes.’ He and Carlisle had discussed Alan Evans but only in terms of what an arsehole he was spouting that communist shit.
‘So we have nothing to worry about.’
‘Not from my side.’
She smiled. ‘So, you thought that I might have had something to do with Alan’s disappearance?’
‘The thought crossed my mind.’
The smile turned into a laugh. ‘Where did you think I’d buried him? The back garden?’
‘I didn’t care as long as I had you.’
‘For the past thirty-three years you’ve been thinking that you were living with a murderess. You are a silly man. Why didn’t you ask me if I’d killed Alan?’
‘It didn’t matter.’
‘What did you think when the piece appeared in the Chronicle?’
‘I was worried for you.’
She stood and walked behind him. She bent down and kissed him. They hadn’t been intimate for some time and she had wondered whether they still cared for each other. ‘I love you. Not just because you thought I might have murdered to get you but because you’re ten times the man Alan was.’
He stood up, turned and kissed her hard on the lips. ‘Let’s leave the dishes for tomorrow.’
The cleaning lady pushed the steel bucket containing the mop and water into the murder squad room at the station. The room was empty and she switched on the light. She looked around furtively before starting to mop the floor. She worked her way slowly towards the top of the room mopping the floor and squeezing out the mop into the bucket as she went. Her objective was just ahead of her. When she reached the top of the room she dumped the mop into the bucket and removed a mobile phone from her pocket. She looked around one last time. She was alone. She selected the camera icon on her phone and quickly photographed the whiteboards. She smiled as she slipped the phone back into the pocket of her jeans. It hadn’t been as difficult as she thought.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
‘Oh Jesus!’ Chief Superintendent Yvonne Davis h
eld her head in her hands. She had listened with growing apprehension as Wilson briefed her on the autopsies of the previous day and on the situation with regard to Jennifer Bowe. ‘Is there any possibility that Siobhan messed up?’
‘She’s a very competent lady,’ said Wilson leaning back in his chair.
‘I’ve got to go upstairs with this right away.’ She ran her hand through her hair. Her management of the station was already getting too much exposure. Some people like to have their heads up the Chief Constable’s bum but she preferred to beaver away quietly. Since taking over, it seemed like she was running to Castlereagh every second day. She was worried that it would be looked on as the inability to control her environment. ‘If it turns out that you’re wrong and this Jennifer Bowe was simply a student, I can pack my few pictures and start looking for another job.’
‘They’ll find something for you but it won’t be as cushy as managing people like me.’
‘This is a major complication, Ian. Are you doubly sure?’
‘She was never at Queen’s, the only birth record for a Jennifer Bowe is a child who died aged five, she doesn’t appear on a government database and the clincher is that nobody reported her missing. She was a spook either for the British or the Irish. Evans was espousing Communism that would have interested our friends across the water. It was a twitchy time and the Cold War was still a reality. It’s entirely conceivable that they would put someone close to him.’
‘But could that be the reason that Evans and her were murdered?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Then how is it relevant?’
‘I don’t know. We have two dead bodies, both shot in the face with a .22. There’s no apparent motive and we have no idea who was involved. And to cap it all we have very little or no forensic evidence and the crime occurred thirty-three years ago. Finding the answer to the motive, and who pulled the trigger is called police work. Only in this case the police work might require some divine intervention. Any news on the Simpson situation?’
