by Derek Fee
‘So,’ Wilson said as he joined her. ‘Time of death, cause of death, stuff like that.’ He smiled.
‘Certainly last night, two shots to the chest, she won’t have anything exact until she does the autopsy.’
‘Let’s go look,’ he motioned over his shoulder. ‘We don’t want the body crew getting antsy.’
Ivan McIlroy was lying on his back. His shirt and jacket were stiffened with blood from his wound. Wilson looked at the face. No marks. He wasn’t tortured. He picked up the corpse’s hand and looked at the wrists. No ligature marks. He wasn’t tied up either. ‘So he wasn’t brought here,’ he said more to himself than to Moira. ‘We’ll need to know from Reid, whether he was killed here or was he moved. My guess is that we’re standing on the murder spot, but I want to be sure. So the question is, why would McIlroy come here alone with somebody who wanted to kill him?’
‘Maybe it was a meeting between the second level of the Rice gang and some other gang,’ Moira said.
‘These people own snooker halls, pubs and bingo halls. That’s where they hold their meetings. Places they control and where it doesn’t matter if they’re seen. This smacks of either a punishment shooting or an abduction. Since there are no marks on the body, I’m inclined to discount both. Let’s wait until Reid digs the bullets out and we’ll see if the weapon has been used before. Call the body crew in. We’re done here. Forensic will collect a dozen refuse bags of rubbish, and I pity the poor devil that has to sift through it. ‘
CHAPTER 41
Wilson went straight to Chief Superintendent Spence’s office as soon as he returned to the station. Spence was in a meeting, but he finished immediately and invited Wilson in.
‘Tell me the rumour I just heard isn’t true,’ Spence said as soon as Wilson settled himself in a chair.
‘I don’t know what the rumour is, but I can tell you that it’s true.’
‘Ivan McIlroy, for Christ’s sake. Killing McIlroy is tantamount to declaring war,’ Spence opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a small white cylinder. He shook two pills into his hand and slapped them into his mouth.
‘I thought you were off the pills.’
‘I’m back on now that I know McIlroy is dead. Tell me about it.’
Wilson outlined the phone call followed by the discovery of the body. He explained their visit to the derelict building.
‘Have you heard the call?’ Spence asked.
‘Not yet. They said they sent me something on the computer. The techs are also tracking the phone. The call was made from a mobile. If the guy who made it knows what he’s doing, it’ll probably end up as a dead end.’
‘Ivan McIlroy, for Christ’s sake.’
‘You already said that.’ Wilson smiled. ‘Do you want to pop a few more pills?’
‘Wait till Jennings hears.’
‘You think that he hasn’t. He’s probably had to change his beautifully pressed bottle green uniform trousers twice since he heard the news. A feud between two Protestant groups is not a pretty sight.’
‘We’ve got to keep a lid on this.’
‘I think that might be a little difficult. Too many people are now aware that Ivan is no longer in the land of the living. It may be that Sammy hasn’t heard the news, but I’d be willing to wager my next months pay that he has. So what did you have in mind in terms of keeping a lid on it?’
‘We’re screwed. Sammy’s the kind of idiot who’ll react without thinking. I won’t even make a guess at the number of bodies before the tit for tat can be stopped.’
Sammy Rice was in the back room of the ‘Black Bear’. He gathered together his four most trusted men. The news of McIlroy’s death shook him to the core. He could ignore Lizzie’s death as a one off but McIlroy was central to his business, and his murder was highly significant.
‘Any of you jokers have any idea what Ivan was doing in that school?’ Rice asked.
Four blank faces looked back at him. These men had already seen examples of Sammy Rice’s famed temper, and none of them wanted to be the butt of it.
‘Somebody must know what the fucker was doing there,’ Rice leaned forward and shouted.
One of the men coughed, ‘Ivan was a solo operator,’ he said hesitantly. ‘He didn’t clear things with the likes of us.’
Rice looked at the four men around the table. Together they wouldn’t equal one Ivan McIlroy. They were foot soldiers in his organisation. McIlroy was an officer capable of running things in his absence. He was beginning to feel that he had allowed business to slide over the past year or so. His new villa in Spain and the lifestyle on the Costa was deflecting him. His business was in Belfast, and that’s what he should have been concentrating on. There were only two possibilities; either McGreary was making a move on him by taking out his number-one lieutenant or McIlroy had decided to go solo and had tried to make a deal which got him killed. In any event, Sammy Rice was in trouble, and his reaction would be the same as always – someone was going to pay. He didn’t like making moves in the dark. Lizzie’s murder was a complete mystery. That was until he had received news of McIlroy’s murder. He had been racking his brains but he could see no connection between Lizzie and McIlroy’s murders. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We need to find out if McGreary’s behind Ivan’s murder. I want you jokers to lift one of McGreary’s top guys.’
The four men looked at each other. ‘Which one do you want?’ one of them asked.
‘Anyone’ll do for the moment. All we want is some information. Lift one of the fuckers and bring him to me.’
‘McGreary won’t like it,’ one of the men said quietly.
‘I don’t give a flying fuck what McGreary like’s or doesn’t like,’ Rice shouted. ‘I want one of his boys lifted, and I want him here yesterday.’
‘It’ll start a war,’ the oldest of the men facing Rice said.
‘If McGreary had Ivan topped the war has already been declared. Now get to fuck out of here and bring me back someone. We’ll use the warehouse in the Harbour Estate. Let me know when you have him.’
The four men stood up slowly and headed toward the bar area. None of them looked happy. It was generally the soldiers who ended up in the coffins during a turf war, and they knew it
Rice sat alone thinking through the possibilities. If it came to an all-out war, it would be difficult to pick a winner. Maybe they’d both be losers. I didn’t start it, Rice said to himself.
CHAPTER 42
Moira McElvaney was still hunched over her desk when Wilson left his office at eight in the evening. He already texted Kate on his late arrival home, and he hadn’t received a reply probably indicating that she would be pretty late home herself. He stood behind Moira and saw that she was still wading through old police reports and intelligence documents.
‘Time to go home,’ he said. ‘I need you fresh for tomorrow. You’re doing the McIlroy autopsy.’
She turned and smiled. ‘Professor Reid will be disappointed,’ she pointed at the papers in front of her. ‘This lot would make interesting reading if we weren’t under such time pressure. Despite the level of redaction, there were a lot of very nasty people out there during the ‘Troubles’.’
‘Kate’s trying to revive the Truth and Reconciliation Commission idea,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think that people would be appalled if they could see even the sanitised reports that I’m reading. Maybe we need to face up to the past before we can go forward. Flags and marching are totally unimportant against the terrible waste of life represented in these pages.’
‘I’m convinced that the motive for Lizzie’s murder is in there somewhere. The majority of the non-family murders in this Province have their genesis in our violent past. I don’t want Kate to get mixed up with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission because I’m afraid that as a society, we’re not mature enough to see it as a process for moving on. Some will see it simply as an opening of old wounds that might lead to more problems. Anyway, you can have a p
hilosophical discussion with your professor boy friend. Finish up here and get yourself home.’
‘These documents should all have been scanned and collated. Then I would simply have to type in Lizzie Rice, and I’d have all the reports relating to her. As it is I’m reading reams of paper just to find her or Nancy Morison’s name.’
‘That’s why they call us the Plod. We have to look at the resources to-morrow to see how we can manage the Rice/Morison cases and the McIlroy murder.’
‘You don’t think that they’re linked?’
‘They may be but I’m worried by the MOs. The man who killed Lizzie and the Morison woman definitely wanted their heads crushed. Whoever killed McIlroy did it Belfast style with a pistol. If it’s the same killer, we need to know why he switched MO for McIlroy. We also need to know how McIlroy is tied to Lizzie and Morison. It’s all about motive. I’m bushed. See you tomorrow.’
Moira watched his back as he walked toward the door to the squad room. His shoulders appeared more hunched, and he moved like a man with a lot on his mind. She closed the file she had been reading. If the motive was in there, she was going to find it.
Wilson smelled dinner as soon as he entered the apartment. He walked into the open-plan living room and saw that the table was set, and two candles were inserted into Waterford Glass candleholders. He smiled when he saw the effort that Kate made. He went into the kitchen. She was at the cooker stirring some gravy, and she hadn’t heard him enter. He put his arms around her from the back and kissed her on the neck. ‘What’s the occasion?’ he asked.
‘I’m trying to soft soap a pissed-off partner,’ she turned, embraced him and kissed him hard on the lips. ‘Also I was listening to the evening news, and I heard about the latest murder.’ She broke off the embrace. ‘I reckoned that you would need a pick me up so I invested in a bottle of Middleton.’ She opened the boxed bottle of whiskey and showed it to him before pouring them both a double measure. She handed him a glass. ‘Cheers,’ she said touching her glass to his. They both drank. ‘I’m sorry about that bloody newspaper profile,’ she said. ‘They were supposed to tell me when it was being published. I was going to warn you it was full of crap.’
‘It showed me another side of you,’ Wilson said switching off the gas under the gravy and leading her away from the kitchen. ‘What made me angry was that it’s an important side and for some reason, or another, I didn’t explore it. You’re a high-flying barrister with a brilliant future, and I’m a police officer with a brilliant past.’
‘Maybe that’s the fit. Both our lives are a bit intense. When I heard the news this evening I realised how much it impacted on you, and therefore, it impacted on us. I know the stress that you operate under. That’s why the special dinner.’
‘You’re more thoughtful that me obviously. I don’t even know what cases you’re working on. But this evening I want to know.’
‘My version of the law would bore to tears someone like you. I don’t want anything to come between us. I just don’t want our relationship to mean that I have to give up the law.’
‘I would never ask you to do that. But there are things which we will have to discuss and one of them is how we’re going to arrange our combined finances.’
‘That’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘Money right now is not an issue. When it becomes one, we can get into that discussion.’
‘There’s also the fact that I’m uncomfortable in your world. I’m just a copper. I don’t socialise with judges and top legal eagles.’
‘We don’t need them if that’s what you want. But you should know that they lap up being in the company of someone who represented his country at a sport they love. I want you to be honest with me. If the finances or the schmoozing bother you, let me know. We’ll sort things out.’
He could see that she was in earnest, but he was also aware that her future depended on maintaining her network. She was intelligent enough to know that eventually the schmoozing would be a large part of her future life. Was he really ready for that? He downed his whiskey and started toward the kitchen.
She pulled him back. ‘Dinner and a conversation about films, books and our child. Your murder and my wife battering case can wait for another day.’
CHAPTER 43
The woman who had killed Lizzie Rice and Nancy Morison sat in her flat. Six women were responsible for her mother’s death. Two of them had died of natural causes, and she had killed two principles. She had never considered herself capable of murder. But there was something inside her that wouldn’t allow her mother’s murderers to go free. She researched her mother’s death with a lot more attention than the police. The police investigation was, at best, cursory at best. Her mother was unimportant. The body had never been found. The police reports at the time concluded that she had run away, and left her young daughter to be placed and taken care of by the state. Just another unmarried mother for whom the pressure of bringing up a small child was too great. The woman she had known as ‘Ma’ was lying in a shallow grave in some Godforsaken part of Ulster. She had long ago given up hope of bringing her bones back and interring her properly. She had contemplated asking Lizzie or Nancy or one of the others where they had dumped her mother’s body, but she knew it was pointless. Her mother was simply one of the many casualties of the ‘Troubles’ who would never be found. Wilson was good but so far she had managed to escape detection. However, the more she advanced on her crusade of revenge the greater the chance of discovery. She realised that she had left more evidence during the murder of Nancy Morison. Sooner or later, they would find a fragment of CCTV that would identify the car. That would be a dead end since she had stolen it specifically for the murder. But that fragment of CCTV would lead them on. Ian Wilson wasn’t a fool. Eventually, he was going to connect the dots and when he did he would start on the trail that would lead to her. Maybe if she could complete her programme before he found her, she could metamorphose again. She had already done it once when she had changed from the lost waif in Belfast into the woman she was now. But she was used to change. She had murdered. She was no longer the same person who had come to Belfast seeking revenge. She felt the change deep in her breast. Although she was avenging her mother, she was losing something of herself. You don’t destroy the heads of two women without changing yourself in some way. You don’t feel a life force disappearing at your hands without change. She didn’t consider herself to be abnormal. Killing was the only way she could think of to avenge her mother. She had considered all the other possibilities but in reality, there had only been one; hunting down and killing the perpetrators. She didn’t feel psychopathic or even sociopathic. She was simply a daughter. The funny thing was that she hardly remembered her mother, and she had no idea, whether she had been a good or a bad person. The memory of standing outside the romper room eating an ice cream while her mother had been murdered inside had stayed with her throughout her childhood. It was that memory that had fuelled her need for vengeance. She wondered whether the need to avenge her mother would have been sated if the murderers had been brought to justice. It was a moot question. For almost thirty years, she had fed on the thought that one day she would avenge her mother. It was that thought that kept the wound of her mother’s death raw. The need for revenge was the main driver of her life. That feeling was as old as mankind itself. It was the basis of the eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. It was the basis of literature from Shakespeare to Mario Puzo and drove characters as diverse as Othello and Don Corleone. According to the saying, it was best served cold. Many times in the course of her relatively short life she had fantasised about how she would avenge her mother by killing those who murdered her. As she sat in her apartment, she was thinking that the fantasy far outweighed the reality. In the fantasy, she could kill the Rice woman again an again. In reality, she was only able to kill her once. Perhaps it would have been better for her to stick to the fantasy. Although she had thought through and visualised the killings something was wrong. She had played t
he scenes of death so many times she fully expected the reality to be ten times sweeter than the fantasy. That it wasn’t so bothered her. The deaths of the women were supposed to restore the equilibrium of her world that had been disturbed by her mother’s death. So far, that wasn’t the case. She erred somewhere along the line. Then a thought struck her. Rice and Morison died without knowing why they had to die. She almost cried with frustration. They should have known that they were dying because they killed her mother, and they should have known that it was she who was about to kill them. They should have known that they were dying because they’d hung a young woman upside down from the ceiling and dropped her until her head was mush. There was still time. There were others to kill. But Rice and Morison were the important ones, and they didn’t know why she killed them. That fact would live with her beyond the current programme of revenge. It was a lacuna that she would put right with the next killing.
Two miles away, Ronald McIver was cleaning up the kitchen in his small house. He already deposited his wife in bed. It was a particularly bad day with Mary. It was the first time that she had not had at least some minutes of lucidity. It probably marked the beginning of the end. She was still capable of taking a bath and dressing herself, but she was beginning to rise in the middle of the night. He wondered would he be able to cope much longer. He didn’t like the idea of putting her in a home. But soon there would be no alternative. He suddenly found himself sobbing uncontrollably. He moved to the sink and started to wash the dishes. He heard a sound behind him and spun around. There was nothing. He was becoming paranoid. His mind had played and replayed the scene in which he had killed McIlroy. He felt that he should be tired, but he had no desire to go to sleep. There were a lot of questions that he had no answer for. Why had he brought his gun along for the meeting? Had he intended to kill McIlroy all along? Was he trying to convince himself that it had been self-defence? IT was McIlroy who made the first move. Or had he? He replayed the scene again. How had the gun arrived in his hand? Did he already have the gun out when McIlroy moved towards him? Why did he pull the trigger? Why had he fired the second shot? It had all happened so fast and each time he replayed the scene it was slightly different, as though he were all the characters in Rashamon. Deep down, he hated McIlroy and wanted to kill. He was a murderer. He felt sweat prickling on his brow and he let a plate slip from his hand into the sink where it hit a cup and broke it into pieces. He picked out the broken cup cutting his hand in the process. A thin line of bright-red blood streaked across his palm. He watched it fascinated then heard the sound behind him and spun around. There was nothing. He ran his palm under the cold tap. The cut was miniscule and was already closing. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to the cut. The kitchen clean up could wait until tomorrow. He would have to go back to work. Wilson would want to know why he had stayed off sick. Tears were running down his cheeks. They were going to catch him and put him in jail. Nothing was more certain. A wave of fear washed over him. How would he survive in prison? How would Mary survive without him? He went into the living room and took his gun from on top of the bookcase. Worthington dodged prison by putting a bullet in his brain. The same option was open to him. He thought about it for a moment and then returned the gun to the top of the bookcase. He wasn’t caught yet. He’d give Wilson a run for his money before he considered suicide
