Fealty resumed speaking from his prepared lines.
‘Right now, my detectives are investigating Hegarty’s role in the murder of Ivor McClintock at a hotel in South Armagh the week before last.’
The smartphones and voice recorders jabbed closer.
‘Are you saying that McClintock’s murder is connected with the intelligence services?’
‘I can’t comment on that.’
‘Do you feel responsible for any murders this man may have committed during the Troubles?’
‘No comment.’
Apart from the odd hesitation, Fealty handled the barrage in a brisk and efficient manner.
‘Did you use Hegarty to manipulate the IRA in terms of their political direction, or did he simply disclose its secrets?’
‘Hegarty gave us options, both in terms of military action and also broader political strategy. We were able to make things happen, and we knew when they would happen.’
Daly saw the politicians’ and media’s will for a collusion investigation deteriorate before his eyes. He was powerless to prevent its collapse. Fealty had hoodwinked him with this ploy to expose Hegarty, a spy whose secrets would tantalize the media and create waves of runaway speculation. The room seemed to grow more crowded, the mood urgent, a reflection of Daly’s state of mind, which boiled with frustration and anger. Secrets and deception lay all around. In every direction, he stumbled upon his own ignorance, each fresh revelation leaving him fumbling in greater darkness.
Daly’s breathing grew heavy and his shoulders slumped. He glanced up at Fealty, listening to the shouted questions of the journalists, waiting for the Special Branch inspector to deliver the final blow, to point the pack of journalists in his direction and utter the condemning words: We have reason to believe that Inspector Celcius Daly knows Hegarty’s whereabouts.
But for some reason, the words never came. Perhaps Fealty had not exhausted him enough, he thought, perhaps he had yet to reach the fifteenth round, the point where he would no longer be fit to throw a single punch.
‘Are you saying that the intelligence services were able to pull the strings of the IRA, thanks to this lone agent?’
‘Correct,’ replied Fealty.
‘There must be more informers than this man. Who else do you have working for you?’
‘No comment.’
‘What murders did you know of in advance and were unwilling or unable to prevent?’
Fealty’s tone changed.
‘Spies like Hegarty operated in a grey zone, serving the public interest, but beyond the protection of the law. In many ways, the legal system has yet to catch up with their role during the conflict.’
Daly found it difficult to breathe. He wished the room wasn’t so crowded. He had been careless of his own reputation and safety, he could see that now. He wished that Hegarty had not returned his call, that he had crawled away into the deepest hole of border country and taken his secrets with him. The media pack had the spy firmly in their sights. They would not rest until they had hounded him into the light. Tomorrow all the newspapers would have Fealty’s revelations plastered over the front pages. They’d send out teams of journalists to pick over the traces of the spy’s life and flush him out from hiding. He was too precious a commodity to the media. He was like the Abominable Snowman or the last of a primitive race, a creature left over from a darker, more violent time. They would drag him blinking like an ancient coelacanth into the blinding glare of notoriety. They would not let him skulk in the shadows any longer.
‘Would it be fair to describe this manhunt as a setback to the peace process?’
‘You’ll have to ask the politicians and Mr Hegarty’s former comrades in the IRA that.’
‘What disciplinary procedures had Mr Hegarty been subject to in the past?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean what punishments or sanctions were imposed whenever he broke the law?’
‘I don’t think I need to remind anyone here today of what it was like in this country during the Troubles. Spies like Mr Hegarty struck a fatal blow at the heart of terrorist organizations, and their actions helped steer this country towards peace.’
‘Nevertheless, there must have been times when he exceeded his position as an intelligence agent in order not to attract suspicion.’
‘Again, no comment.’
‘Is Hegarty’s life under threat?’
‘From whom?’
‘Under threat from members of the IRA. Now that he has been exposed.’
‘I can’t speak for his former associates.’
‘Who can you speak for?’ For a moment, the pack of journalists grew still, the scent of blood hanging in the air.
‘If you study the press statement we have released, I think that you will find our position very clear. If you have any further questions...’ Fealty paused and glanced at the back of the room. Once again, Daly thought he was going to point towards him, but the inspector gestured to the two officers flanking him. ‘...I suggest you put them to our press team.’
Fealty rose and quickly made his exit through a side door. The journalists headed, with the synchronicity of a herd, in the same direction. Bodies jostled against each other in a competition in journalistic greed. They were within touching distance of career-making scoops, the point where professional rivalry borders on gullible irrationality. Fealty glided through the doors and several police officers were forced to bar the reporters from following him.
Daly waited for the room to empty, wanting some peace to untangle his thoughts. Journalists drifted past him, pocketing their phones, shelving their questions, their skirmish with the murky past over for another day.
‘What did you think of that?’ one of them asked another.
‘Betrayal. Deceit. The fog of war. That was the mother lode.’
Daly began to think clearly or at least with enough focus to understand what had happened. Intelligence services rarely sacrificed their own people to the media in this way. It wasn’t good for business, for the recruitment of future informers. Cutting Hegarty loose like this was an unprecedented step.
However, the spy had clearly overstepped the line, reasoned Daly. He had threatened to open a window on to the shadowy intelligence environment, and what lurked there was unpleasant and potentially ruinous for many reputations. Everything Fealty had revealed was most probably true, but the elements of truth were also mechanisms for a much deeper deception, and a means to tarnish Daly’s reputation and the trustworthiness of Hegarty’s testimony forever. Fealty’s officers were probably in the process of raiding his cottage and arresting Hegarty right now, if they had not already done so, with a carefully contrived leak to the press beforehand to give the story a little extra push.
With a sick feeling of dread, he made his way down the corridor towards the exit. He bumped into Irwin, whose face was almost ecstatic-looking.
‘Watch out, Daly, you can’t run with the wolves and hide with the sheep,’ he shouted after him.
28
When Daly returned to his car, he saw Pryce standing there, a black scarf wrapped round her throat and chin, her stockinged legs planted close together for comfort against the cold. She looked as though she had been waiting for him.
‘You look worried, Celcius. What’s up now?’
He couldn’t keep himself from scowling.
‘None of your bloody business.’
He climbed into the car and rolled down the window.
‘I’ve told you before. I don’t want to be part of your book or answer any more of your stupid questions.’
She hurried over to his window.
‘I did a quick interview with Fealty about your investigation.’ She studied Daly for a reaction. ‘He doesn’t seem to like you.’
‘There’s a surprise. The investigation has entered a very dangerous phase. Too dangerous for meddling journalists.’
Her voice was casual, relaxed.
‘You can’t stop me searching f
or the truth, Celcius.’
‘You’re right. I can’t stop you.’
‘It’s fun watching you try.’
Daly accelerated away. He caught sight of his face in the overhead mirror. It was the face of a doomed man. He took the back roads to his cottage, driving rashly, his only comfort the possibility that at any moment the car might swerve or career off the road in the way that Walsh’s had done. He felt simultaneously lost and pinpointed, like a red dot in the middle of an unfinished map, denied and dislocated by the changing terrain of the past. Adrenalin coursed through his body, which gave his predicament a kind of levity, a detachment from reality. What was there to stop him driving south across the border, and keeping going for hours until he was as far away as possible from this dark corner of Northern Ireland?
However, he reminded himself that a wanted man was residing in his cottage. He needed every ounce of his strength to stay ahead of his enemies. He had to think clearly, stay sober and practical, rather than submit to this internal panic. His car got stuck behind a school bus. He drummed the steering wheel impatiently. He thought it incredible that the world was keeping to its unchanging course while a separate stream of events had turned him into a host for a murderer and a spy.
He slowed on approaching a police checkpoint less than half a mile from his cottage. Unexpectedly, they waved him through. He stared at the police officers in his rear-view mirror. They stood still in the middle of the road, watching his car.
He drove up the final stretch to his cottage and parked the vehicle. He stared at the old house. He was surprised to see no outward sign of disturbance. The place looked just as he had left it. I am back home, he said to himself, to attend to a wanted man. He grimaced. It was a topsy-turvy domestic arrangement for a police detective, but what choice did he have in the matter? He stared at the cottage, reluctant to move from the safety of the driver’s seat. He wondered who else was watching the scene, waiting for Hegarty to reveal himself. Perhaps Special Branch were going to leave him alone with the spy for a while so that he would wallow in cold anticipation. Allow his imagination to go to work. Wasn’t that their standard procedure in the run-up to arrest and interrogation?
My eyes have been sealed for years. Pryce was right, I have grown up with blinkers on, and now that the facts of the past are unravelling, I have no choice but to follow them through to the end. He got out of the car, and strode towards the cottage door. Inside, there was no sign of life. Secretly, he hoped that the spy had fled, but he was wrong. He found Hegarty in the shadows of the scullery staring at the cold fire grate. The detective was right back where he had started that morning.
Hegarty appeared unconcerned when Daly relayed the details of the press conference. He was content to wait. ‘If they want to arrest me, let them arrest me here,’ he told Daly.
However, the detective was determined to work out some plan of action that would resolve both their difficulties. Different plots emerged out of tense little conversations that they took from room to room, window to window. They could see the police checkpoint at the bottom of the road, the officers standing about, stopping the occasional car. The house filled with the unspoken fear that the police would swoop at any moment.
‘We must find a way out of this impasse,’ said Daly doggedly. ‘You can’t hide here forever.’
‘I have no plans to run anywhere else.’
Daly sighed in frustration.
‘I am sorry to be a source of trouble,’ said Hegarty. ‘But it is not my fault you are at war with Special Branch, too.’
It alarmed Daly to see that Hegarty was resigned to wait for the police to make the next move. It was as if Daly’s complicity, his search for the truth, had provided him with a temporary refuge. The spy settled into an armchair in a corner of the scullery, and ignored Daly, mumbling to himself, his eyes darting from right to left. Daly slammed the door shut on him. Not for the first time that day, he found himself wishing for his own life back, the one he had before he discovered Walsh’s murder triangle. He thought about crawling into a chair himself, closing his eyes and willing sleep to come. But he did not want to be lying defenceless when Special Branch arrived at his door. He prowled from room to room, glancing through the windows, alert to every sound and noise. He checked on Hegarty, who seemed half-asleep, a secretive smile playing on his lips. He wanted the spy out of his life, but was unable to evict him from the cottage. He hungered for privacy, to be left alone with the shadows of the past.
It was late afternoon. The stand-off could not continue indefinitely.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ asked Daly.
‘I’ve no appetite.’
‘You must eat something.’ His voice was gruff rather than sympathetic.
Daly went into the kitchen. Unfortunately, he did not have a lot to work with. He took out some bread and told Hegarty to boil the kettle. He didn’t think it right that he should fetch and carry for the spy. In the circumstances, domestic lines had to be drawn, and Hegarty needed to understand that.
They stood and waited for the water to boil. Daly found a knob of butter, a tin of beans and a can of pears in syrup. Hegarty set the table and Daly dished out the food. It was a fugitive’s feast, enough to hold themselves together for the trials ahead.
A haze settled over Daly’s mood as he drank his tea. Together, they made the effort to wash the dishes and put away the plates. Any prospect that Hegarty would help Daly discover why his mother was killed had evaporated. Anxiety that he was sheltering a fugitive had turned to despondency. The fantasy that gaining the confidence of a disgruntled spy would shine a penetrating light on the past was revealed as the desperate ploy of a powerless detective. All he had found was another blank wall in the heart of the labyrinth. Worse than that, he now had the problem of working out what to do with his unwelcome lodger.
Daly got out the bottle of whiskey and poured two small glasses. They sat at the kitchen table.
‘I have to help you escape from this cottage,’ he told the spy.
‘You want rid of me.’
‘No, but I can’t wait on you any longer. We have to settle on a course of action and commit to it. You are your own man with your own enemies, while I need to go back to my old life and figure out what to do next with Walsh’s murder triangle.’
‘A good spy never acts out of fear. The police are waiting for us to make the first move. Why give them the satisfaction of seeing us run?’ Hegarty flashed Daly a crooked smile.
Daly was silent. He sipped his whiskey. Through the window, he watched the sky darken with the premonition of rain. The light grew so dim it could have been evening. He always thought best when the light was like that. At one point, a helicopter hovered low over the cottage, its scythe-like blades disturbing the air with so much violence the windowpanes rattled in their frames.
Daly went through a methodical analysis of the options they had and came up with a plan. He made another pot of tea and convinced himself that helping Hegarty escape in this way was an act of mercy in accordance with an unwritten code of rights, the charter to a country he represented, the townlands of Walsh’s murder triangle and its parishes of grief.
Determined now in his course of action, he got up and packed Hegarty a small holdall with a sleeping bag, tins of food and winter clothes, enough to help him survive a few nights in the open. When he had finished, he returned to the living room and picked up the phone. Pryce answered his call almost immediately.
‘Celcius?’ She sounded surprised.
‘I need to meet you.’
‘Why?’
‘I want you to do me a special favour. I can’t discuss it on the phone.’
‘I thought you didn’t want to see me again.’
‘At the moment, you’re the only person I can rely on.’
‘Are you saying you’ve discovered something important?’
‘I believe so. I need you to give me a lift into border country. Hegarty has told me where he hid a copy of Hannon’s
old security files. There’s enough there to help fill in the gaps of Walsh’s murder map.’
‘Those files mean everything. Once we have them, the balance of power will swing towards us. I’ll come to your house immediately.’
‘Wait. There’s a police checkpoint just down the road from the cottage. Meet me at Gillen’s crossroads. It’s less than a mile away through the fields. I’ll be there at about five p.m. when the light begins to fade.’
‘I’ll see you there.’
The line went dead. Despite the caution he had shown on the phone, he hoped Special Branch had been listening to the exchange. The success of his plan depended on it.
‘It’s important you look after yourself as best you can,’ he told Hegarty as they waited. ‘Don’t try to contact me until you are safely over the border.’
The anticipation of escape had brought a flush to Hegarty’s face but he said nothing. Daly felt his own heart begin to pound as the time came closer to leave.
29
The checkpoint was there, at the bottom of the road, waiting for them. A policeman carrying a gun loomed out of the twilight drizzle, a squad car blocking the road behind and more officers pacing about. Daly brought his car to a halt. The armed officer was so close Daly could see the firm line of his mouth and his marksman’s blue eyes. Had he been instructed to shoot Hegarty on sight? Through the windscreen wipers, he peered to see if he recognized the officer, but there was nothing familiar about the man, who just stood there, cradling the gun in his arms, his expression a blank.
Daly caught sight of his own reflection in the car mirror and saw a stranger behind the wheel. He realized that the rules of this checkpoint were different from all the others he had encountered. He was no longer on the right side of the law. He was a fugitive’s driver, about to go on the run from the police. There was no more time to wait patiently in the shadows. From now on, he had to draw his enemies towards him.
Above the sound of the wipers, he heard the rasp of Hegarty’s heavy breathing. The spy’s presence felt uncomfortably close. Daly’s hand on the wheel shook slightly. He watched the wipers repeatedly clear the web of raindrops, revealing the policeman’s figure, still and alert in the middle of the road. He thought of his mother and Father Walsh, and how they must have felt confronted by a similar checkpoint on a lonely road, watching the figure of a police officer, waiting tensely for what he was going to do next.
Silence Page 22
