Death to Pay

by Derek Fee

  ‘You’ve been a good boy,’ he stared at the photo. ‘George, drop this fucking idiot off somewhere and get back here. You, Gerry, or whatever the fuck your name is, forget you were ever here.’

  Big George put his hand on Healy’s shoulder and ushered him from the room.

  Rice took out his phone and hit the green button. ‘An address for Ronald McIver,’ he said when the phone was answered.

  A half a minute later, he had the address of the man who might have killed Ivan McIlroy.

  Eric Taylor watched the two goons pick up Healy and followed their car to the house in Ballygomartin he knew belonged by Sammy Rice. He parked down the road and waited while Healy was marched into the house. A few minutes later, Healy and one of the goons that Taylor knew as George Carroll left the house and got back in the car. He followed them back into Central Belfast and saw Healy being dropped off on the Springfield Road. As soon as the car and the goons had sped away, Healy removed a cigarette from a packet and lit up. Taylor eased his car into a space close to Healy and got out. He wasn’t about to replay the scene outside the Black Bear because he was certain sure that Healy would bolt if hailed again from a car.

  Healy puffed on his cigarette, and gradually his hands stopped shaking. He knew that he had been in the company of one of the most dangerous men in Belfast. He decided to forget his earlier plan about the television. He needed a drink. The Orient Bar was the nearest watering hole, so he made his way there. He went inside and ordered a pint of Guinness and a whiskey chaser. He was beginning to breathe easier when a man sat down beside him. He turned and saw it was the Peeler from the Black Bear. He was about to stand up when he felt the Peeler’s hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Detective Constable Eric Taylor,’ the man said. ‘Time for us to have a little chat.’ He told Healy that he had been waiting from him to finish his shift and had seen him being lifted by George Carroll. He knew about the trip to the Ballygomartin house, and he wanted to know what had happened inside.

  ‘Do you know who owns that house?’ Healy asked.

  ‘Sammy Rice,’ Taylor said calmly.

  The barman of the Orient approached.

  ‘Do you have a coffee machine?’ Taylor asked.

  The barman nodded.

  ‘Americano, please,’ Taylor said.

  ‘You’re going to get me killed,’ Healy looked furtively around the bar but recognised nobody.

  ‘Nobody’s getting’ killed. Just tell me what happened in Ballygomartin and I’ll be out of your life.’

  ‘What if I say nothing happened?’ Healy took a long slug of his Guinness.

  ‘Then I’ll be forced to invite you to accompany me to the station. Now that might definitely succeed in getting you killed.’

  The barman returned and put a coffee in front of Taylor. There was even a ginger biscuit on the saucer. Belfast was definitely becoming continental, Taylor thought. He sipped his coffee and watched Healy agonise with his conscience.

  ‘Ok,’ Healy said finally. ‘McIlroy met this guy a few days ago in the Black Bear. I made the guy for a Peeler. You get to know the type. I have a good memory for faces so they brought me to Rice, and he showed me four photographs. I recognised one of them as the guy who met with McIlroy.’

  ‘Only four photos?’ Taylor was surprised. Why only four, Belfast has hundreds of coppers?

  ‘Only four,’ Healy repeated. ‘And you were one of them.’

  Moira looked up from the file she was reading. Her concentration was all over the place. At first, she thought that the altercation with McIver was the cause but the more she thought about it the more her mind came back to Jack Armstrong. It wasn’t so much what had been written in the report on the activities of Lizzie Rice and her merry women but what hadn’t been said. It was obvious that Armstrong felt that Lizzie was a criminal who should be closely watched, but he didn’t outline any evidence as to why he should feel that way. The next file covering 1984 was completely different. Lizzie was beginning to fall off the radar already. Something had gone down between her and the hierarchy of the UVF so that she had to be sidelined. Lizzie’s group had been all but disbanded and its activities really did correspond to Joan Boyle’s assertion that they provided sandwiches and drinks. That must have been one hell of a climb down for someone like Lizzie who in earlier files was portrayed as the Protestant hero. What happened in the early nineteen eighties that forced the UVF to effectively shut Lizzie Rice and her friends down? Moira looked at her notebook and the name she had circled so many times. She picked up the phone and prayed that there was still someone working this late in Human Resources.

  Wilson was having similar concentration problems. He had already sent a text to Kate explaining that he would be late. She hadn’t bothered to reply, which was unusual. He wondered whether the silence was ominous. He had made the decision that McIver was out of the squad. He would tell him in the morning. He could have just sent him across to Human Resources, and some guy with a psychology degree would break the news, but that wasn’t the way he operated. Ronald had been one of his team, and he wasn’t going to finesse the bad parts of the job. He would collect his warrant card and his gun, ship him off to the head doctor and hope for the best. He wished he had been out and about that evening instead of trying to staunch the flow of administration. His finger seemed to hover constantly over the computer keys. He was aware of a knock on his door and he looked up to see Moira standing there.

  ‘A word, Boss.’

  ‘Come in and sit down.’

  Moira told him about the change in the files with regard to Lizzie Rice. ‘Something happened around ’83 or early ‘84 that turned Lizzie from a first division player into an also ran. There’s nothing in our files, and since we can’t access military intelligence files, we’re going to have to discover it ourselves. One of your predecessors, DCI Jack Armstrong, had severe reservations about Lizzie. He was pushing for a full investigation into her activities but since at that time King Rat and Mad Dog were actively murdering people, I assume Lizzie wasn’t the first priority. The push to have Lizzie investigated ended when Armstrong moved on.’

  ‘You think he was on to something?’

  ‘It’s never said but it’s there in the subtext. Lizzie is dangerous. She’s done bad things. We need to stop her.’

  ‘Where’s Armstrong now?’

  ‘I just got off the phone with Human Resources.’

  Wilson’s eyebrows rose and he glanced at his watch. ‘No kidding.’

  ‘They’re usually away by five but there was someone still there. Armstrong is alive. He’s living in the old people’s home in Portaferry.’

  ‘And you called them?’

  ‘Yes. I made an appointment to see him at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  ‘We’ll go together. I think that you should go home now. You look exhausted. I want you to forget the things that McIver said. He’s unhinged.’

  ‘Maybe it was a case of in vino veritas except instead of vino there was some kind of mental breakdown. Maybe I am the Fenian bitch to most of the staff but nobody will come out and say it.’

  ‘I can tell you everybody in this station respects you and what you stand for. You’re an officer in the PSNI, and you have the rights and obligations of any officer irrespective of religion or colour. You’ve done an outstanding job here and you fully deserved your promotion. In fact, I think that you’ll go far.’

  ‘Thanks, Boss, but I don’t need the pep talk.’

  ‘That’s what they pay me for. To pep talk people like you. Now get the hell on home. Tell that boyfriend of yours that you’re in sore need of a drink. Home, no arguments.’

  ‘Night, Boss.’

  He watched her as she turned and made her way into the squad room. She turned off her computer and picked up her bag. He saw her fiddle with her mobile and assumed that she was following his instructions. Not for the first time he thanked God that Moira McElvaney had landed in his squad.

  CHAPTER 59

&n
bsp; Big George Carroll had left school at fourteen and had been working for Sammy Rice ever since. His reports at school never read ‘can do better’, principally because most of his teachers realised that the only thing between George’s ears was fresh air. George liked working for Rice. The boss did the thinking, and he had the brawn to carry out instruction that generally involving some level of violence to be meted out. And nobody did violence better than Big George. Sammy told him to pick up the Peeler in the photo and pick up the Peeler he was going to do. He stood on the stoop of the small house occupied by the McIvers, and rang the bell. There was no answer. George moved to the window and looked in the front room. There was an old doll sitting on an easy chair directly facing him. He would have assumed that she was asleep if it wasn’t for the plastic bag over her head. He turned his gaze to the left and saw the back of the head of a man sitting in a similar easy chair but facing the old doll. That had to be the guy Sammy had sent him to collect. He went back to the front door and rang the bell again. Nothing. George looked to the right and the left. To the right, there was a small gap beside the garage leading to the back garden. He wondered whether there was a back door and made for the rear of the house. The back garden was small and covered in grass. There was not a flower or tree in sight. George moved to the back door and tried the handle. It was locked. He was running out of options. Two glass panes constituted the top of the door. George hit one of them with his hand, and it shattered. He cleaned out the broken glass and put his hand into the gap feeling around for the lock. The key was in the lock. He turned it and the back door swung in.

  McIver heard the glass shatter at the back of the house. He walked across to Mary and removed the plastic bag from her head. She looked so peaceful sitting there. He stroked her cheek. It was already turning cold. He had almost forgotten about the sound of the shattered glass that had brought him out of his reverie. He turned and saw that a huge man was blocking the door to the living room. ‘What the..?’

  Big George had spent thousands of hours in the boxing club, and although he was a big man, he moved like a cat. Before McIver could finish his question, he had covered the distance between them and had landed a punch to McIver jaw. The PSNI man collapsed in a heap at his wife’s feet. George put his fingers on the old doll’s neck like he saw them do in the cop shows. There was no movement and he could see that she was already cold. The lousy bastard topped his own wife. He picked McIver up like he was some collapsed Pierrot doll. He hefted him over his shoulder and started for the front door. He opened it and left. Job done, he thought as he deposited McIver in the back seat of the Volvo Estate he’d used for the job.

  The forensic report from the Boyle house was in. While not a lot had been discovered, Wilson was right about the bathroom. They found two stands of foreign hair, identical and certainly the hair of a woman. At least, it was something. All he needed now was to match a suspect to the hair. He was contemplating leaving the office when his mobile phone rang.

  ‘Boss,’ Eric Taylor voice came over the line. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Still at the office,’ Wilson could hear the tension in Taylor’s voice. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Do you know where Ronald lives?’

  Wilson gave the address.

  ‘I’m there. We’ve got a problem.’

  ‘I’m listening.’ The pit of his stomach ached. It was the Joe Worthington affair all over again.

  Taylor explained quickly his conversation with Healy, who had given a fair description of McIver as the man he saw talking with McIlroy in the Black Bear. ‘I came over to see whether I could talk this out with Ronald.’

  ‘And.’

  ‘The front door was open. Mary is dead in the living room. I’m no expert, but I don’t think it was natural. There’s no sign of Ronald. I haven’t contacted anyone yet, I think you should get over here as quickly as you can.’

  ‘Call it in and put an APB out for McIver.’ It was all gone to shit in a basket. He called down for a car. It was too late to call Moira. She was probably in a bar somewhere winding down. Eric and he could handle whatever had to be done.

  Two squad cars were pulled up on either side of the McIver house when Wilson arrived. A uniform was busy setting up crime-scene tape around the house, and the usual gaggle of spectators had started to arrive. Wilson met Taylor at the door.

  ‘I’m confused, Boss,’ Taylor said. ‘The glass at the back door has been broken from the outside, but the front door was open when I arrived.’

  Wilson entered the house and went immediately into the front room. Mary was lying back in an easy chair as though she was asleep. There was a glass on the side table. A plastic bag lay on the floor. It wasn’t necessary to be a stunning detective to see what happened. Forensic would find traces of a strong barbiturate in the glass and traces of Mary McIver’s saliva on the inside of the plastic bag. It was murder, but Ronald’s barrister would call it a mercy killing while his client’s mind was disturbed. He might get away with three years in an open prison while they worked some miracle with his brain. Or he might just disappear into himself. Wilson had seen both results. However, Eric hit the nail in the head about the crime scene. The broken window didn’t fit in with the scenario that Wilson had imagined. Had Ronald been forced to break in? He doubted it. There were no signs of violence in the house. Mary was more than halfway to being a vegetable. But he couldn’t deny that Ronald had run. The uniforms would pick him up sooner or later wandering along the side of the Lagan or sleeping rough in some doorway. He wanted to pity him, but he had taken his wife’s life, and that wasn’t his prerogative. It was against the law, and he would have to pay the price. He looked again at the woman sitting in the chair, and he wondered whether she would thank her husband for taking the initiative. Ronald was off beam but perhaps that’s what it took to make the final decision. Wilson looked around the room. His eye caught the edge of a leather holster sticking out at the top of the bookcase. He walked across and reached his hand up to pull McIver’s service pistol from its hiding place. He slipped the Glock into his pocket. It was good news that McIver wasn’t rambling around Belfast with a loaded PSNI issued weapon in his possession. There was nothing more he could do here. He went to the front door and almost ran into Stephanie Reid. She was dressed for a night out in a black chiffon dress that showed off her ample bosom and a pair of tanned legs.

  ‘Like what you see?’ she said noticing the way his eyes ran over her body.

  ‘Did we catch you at the theatre?’ he said ignoring her comment.

  ‘I was out for a very expensive meal with a man who hopes to get into my pants. You’d love to have seen the expression on his face when I was called away. All that money gone for nothing.’

  ‘Why are you always so blunt?’

  ‘Three years in the Kivus changes you forever. I don’t have to read books about living in the now. The monsters roaming around in this world already taught me to grab at what I want while I’m still able. I’ve already met some monsters face to face once, and I survived. Next time I might not be so lucky. In the meantime, there’s life, and I intend to enjoy it.’

  ‘It was in the Congo?’

  ‘Oh yes. What do we have here?’

  ‘Wife of one of my team. My guess barbiturates followed by a plastic bag. She had early dementia, or maybe Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘Mercy killing?’

  ‘Murder. You’ll be out of here in ten minutes. Time of death is all that interests us. It’s pretty recent.’

  ‘My date has gone home, and I’m still hungry. It would be a shame to waste the hour it took me to get made up. You could even take his place for the afters.’

  ‘Thanks but no thanks. I’m heading home.’

  ‘I’m dying of envy,’ Reid said and started for the living room with her bag in hand

  Wilson watched her enter the house. For a second, he almost accepted her invitation. The problem was he wasn’t quite sure what he was heading home to. He took out his mobile and called
the station. If Donald Spence was still in the office, he’d need to be informed. ‘The Boss still at home?’ he asked the desk sergeant. ‘Good, tell him I’m on my way.’

  CHAPTER 60

  ‘We are royally fucked,’ Chief Superintendent Donald Spence’s pacing had almost wore a hole in the already threadbare carpet of his office. ‘There is no possibility whatsoever that it wasn’t him.’

  ‘None,’ Wilson said simply. He was sitting in the visitor’s chair in front of Spence’s desk. He had gone to Spence’s office as soon as he had returned. ‘Things could get worse.’ He explained about the meeting between McIver and McIlroy.

  ‘You have his gun?’ Spence asked.

  ‘I already passed it on to forensic.’

  ‘I don’t believe this is happening,’ Spence continued pacing and rubbing at his temples. ‘You’ve done it this time, Ian.’

  ‘Hold on a second, I didn’t kill Mary McIver, and I hadn’t anything to do with the McIlroy murder, so don’t let’s get this thing out of perspective. You and I need to be on the same page here, or we really are fucked. Mary McIver was descending into Alzheimer’s, and her husband couldn’t handle it. It can easily be sold as a mercy killing. After all, PSNI officers are just human beings.’

  ‘And how will we sell McIlroy?’

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We need to talk to McIver.’

  ‘And if he did it?’

  ‘Then you and I are going to have to sit down and see how we’re going to spin it. If McIver did it, it may have been self-defence. We need to know what happened before we develop a scenario.’

  ‘And McIver, where might he be?’

  ‘Anybody’s guess, possibly off his head rambling around Belfast. We know that Sammy Rice is looking for him and there were signs of a break-in at his house. We have an APB out on him. The uniforms will pick him up sooner or later. If Sammy has him, he won’t risk harming him. McIver’s not exactly Billy the Kid. If he did McIlroy, something went seriously wrong.’