Disappeared

by Anthony Quinn

  Afterward he walked over to the sink and ran himself a glass of cold water. The reflection in the small mirror surprised him. He saw the nose, lips, and beard of a grizzled old man. He looked more than his seventy-odd years. However, it reassured him to see the firmness of his chin had not been forgotten, or the falconlike glare of his gray eyes. His tight mouth and pursed lips still exuded determination.

  His face had once struck terror in the hearts of weaker men, the informers he had groomed and slowly brought into the fold. Frightened men caught up in sectarian intrigues with no idea whom to trust. Even now, his flared nostrils and the corners of his mouth registered contempt at the thought of them.

  His work for Special Branch had left him with an eternal look of scorn, he realized. He examined the features of his face in concern, as if a mask had grown there like skin and flesh. Would he ever be able to cast it off? The mask was a projection of his own spirit, the persona he had adopted to deal with all those years of terror. He would never be able to wipe away that look of cold contempt.

  His hand shook slightly as he brushed back his hair. Over the last twelve months, his illness had tamed him. Infirmity, when it came, was not in the form he had expected. He had always believed he would succumb to a heart attack, or some abrupt physical catastrophe. Not Alzheimer’s disease. Not this long, drawn-out wait, with chaos slowly seeping around him like a poison gas. Even now, sitting in this room, waiting for his visitor, he did not fully understand what was happening.

  His mind was like a house that had been repeatedly burgled by a memory thief. It was a brutal and chaotic crime. Some of the most personal objects were gone forever, drawers plundered, furniture upturned and broken, while other valuable items were left strangely intact.

  The sparseness of his new accommodation was a comfort. It was reassuring to be surrounded by objects he could identify and understand. The bed and sink, and the mirror above. The bedside cabinet with a well-thumbed Bible, the brown leather file and a radio.

  However, a flat, circular object suspended from the wall was causing him some confusion. He knew it had a connection with the arrival of his visitor, a clue lying waiting for him to decipher or calculate. The numbers one to twelve were organized in a circle, and he stared intently at them. He could not figure out why anyone would put numbers in a shape like that, making it so difficult to add or subtract them.

  At least the visitor knew what he was doing. He nodded contentedly to himself. He had chosen the right man for the job. His recruitment skills were still sharp in spite of his illness. If it hadn’t been for the visitor, he would be a dead man now. He was sure of that.

  Their first meeting had been a happy accident. Out of habit, the old man had not revealed his real name. The visitor might easily have been one of those shadowy men from the past, still bent on revenge. He might even have been a journalist, or a legal researcher, poking his nose where it didn’t belong. However, the visitor had been none of those.

  He had told the old man the catastrophe that had befallen his family, a story that, to Hughes’s surprise, prompted tears. They had sat together afterward, sipping tea and watching the sun set over Lough Neagh. They arranged to meet again, and soon it became the norm for them to sit late into the evening, the visitor with a notebook and pen, the old man talking at length. The kind woman who brought them tea joked that he was having his biography written. You must be famous, she remarked.

  He turned to the bedside cabinet and lifted the leather file. He opened it carefully and lifted out the thick bundle of handwritten notes and maps. Through the walls, he heard his neighbor begin to snore. He replaced the notes within the file, turned on the radio, and lay back on his bed. The visitor is like me, he thought. He likes everything clear-cut and well planned. If only his mind was as good as when he handled his circle of informers. This illness has betrayed me, he thought with bitterness. His impatience intensified, rose up, and enveloped the whole room—the dark walls, the sink and mirror, the strange object on the wall, and all the other accouterments of his carefully organized surroundings.

  At the appointed time of four p.m., the visitor opened the door and entered the room. The old man had tried to resist sleep, fearing that his dreams would force their way out and fill the room like a fog. However, in the end he had succumbed, lying on his back, his arms loosely folded across his chest, a deep rasping breath dragging his rib cage up and down.

  The visitor stood for a while in the middle of the room and listened carefully. A thin rain fell outside with occasional drops pecking the window.

  The visitor said nothing and waited, not wishing to break the impression that the old man and all his secret knowledge lay within his power. He had gotten over the instinctive recoil he felt on first learning of the old man’s past, the shock at each spilled reminiscence that was like a jab in the guts.

  As the old man had rambled on during their first meeting, the visitor realized he might know the answers to questions that had haunted him for years. He had almost given up hope of finding an explanation for the tragedy that had darkened his life. The Troubles were over, and the truth was being whitewashed by politicians. That was the horror of the cease-fire, that your perceptions could be so blurred you no longer recognized the terrorist. The threads of causality linking paramilitaries with their atrocities had been broken. Three decades of bombs and shootings now drifted away from the rational ordering of things like terrible acts of a vengeful God, with murderer after murderer floating free from their crimes. What was required to bring them together again was the simple act of recollection.

  However, Alzheimer’s had clogged up the old man’s memories with obvious inaccuracies and meaningless references to his childhood. The story’s traces had been scattered by the illness. But now the visitor was determined to pick them up one by one.

  The rain fell heavier against the windowpane, blurring the view, numbing the mood in the unlit room. Everything will go as planned, the visitor reassured himself. Before the old man’s memories poured irretrievably away, he would have his moment of revenge.

  The sound of his own breathing rose, became hard and dry. Hughes sat up in bed suddenly, his eyes full of light and urgency.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  He took in the figure of the visitor, and a look of recognition passed across his face.

  “I was afraid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought they had moved the beds around while I was sleeping.”

  “The beds don’t move.” The visitor’s voice was reassuring. “They are here to stay. Just like you.”

  He helped the old man to his feet and sat him at a table by the window. Hughes turned to him, his face sharpening.

  “You smell like the IRA.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I smell the whiff of diesel and sweat. The aroma of terror. You’ve been running from someone.”

  The visitor ignored the comment, producing a set of photographs and more maps, and laying them on the table. The old man gazed up at him with a look of worry.

  “You must tell me if they move the beds around. Otherwise, I’ll be completely lost. We’ll work out a warning sign. Promise me that.”

  “I promise you.”

  Carefully the visitor guided the old man’s attention back to the maps.

  Sighing, he lifted them to the light. The features of his face hardened into a mask. He stifled a groan as he tried to make his brain function. A series of grotesque images flashed into his mind, a man hanging upside down in a cow shed, cigarette burns on the back of his hands, clumps of torn-out hair lying on the manure-decorated floor. Torture was part of Hughes’s business, and he had come across it many times in his career. The secret, he had instructed his men, was to find the victim’s weak point.

  When he lifted his head up, the visitor’s eyes were hard. They were like fingers reaching into his mind.

  “How did you get away?” the old man asked. “There were three IRA men there tha
t night and they had you tied and gagged.”

  “How do you know that? Were you there too?”

  “I was in the vicinity,” the old man replied evasively, rubbing his hands as though washing himself of any responsibility. He spoke very slowly. “How did you manage to survive?”

  “I survived because death is not the end.”

  19

  Given the seriousness of Kenneth Mitchell’s injuries Daly had expected him to be living in some sort of sheltered accommodation, so he was surprised to find the directions taking him to a farm close to the border at Aughnacloy. It was a windy day. The border roads were tortuous, a tangled web of former cart tracks and winding lanes that led everywhere and nowhere. Perfect for smuggling diesel or, in his father’s day, a horde of fattened pigs, mused Daly.

  The weather seemed unable to settle into one particular mood. A desolate sky alternated with views of a low, sharp sun. After a squall of rain, the clouds cleared and the wind dropped completely.

  On the approach to the house, Daly glimpsed a tranquil lake flashing through trees, disturbingly still through the black branches, like a view of a dream or another dimension. A neat, stone-built house overlooked the lake. The reflections of the trees, some thickly branched, some sparse, added to the stillness of the scene.

  He noticed a look of anxiety pass across the boy’s face. Daly wondered if he was handling this right. The difficulty was he didn’t know what exactly he was trying to achieve by coming here. By itself, rubbing Special Branch’s nose in it was hardly a good enough reason.

  “You know, you can sit this out and stay in the car,” Daly told him.

  “It’s OK. I know the details of the investigation as well as the furniture in my bedroom. The amount of hours I’ve sat in bed going over it all in my head…” He looked at the lake. “It’s the stillness that makes me feel anxious. I want to drop a huge stone into that water.”

  It was too quiet for Daly’s taste too. The backdrop of the forest enclosed the house and guarded the icy stillness in the air. He watched the transfixed trees, waiting for some form of movement, the shadow of a bird, or the tremble of a leaf, but none came.

  “I want you to ask him where Dad’s body is,” said Dermot. His face was as motionless as a photograph.

  “You think he might know?”

  “Mum thinks he’s capable of remembering some clue or lead that might help the search.”

  How can you forget something like that in the first place? wondered Daly. How long can you keep details like that hidden? He looked at the boy. If Mitchell did know the story behind Oliver Jordan’s disappearance, it was about to come back and haunt him with a vengeance.

  A brand-new jeep filled the small garage next to the house. The grounds looked as though an expert gardener regularly tended them. The gravel paths were free of weeds, and juniper trees in pots sat at the front door. The vines of some creeping plant covered the walls.

  Mitchell’s pension must have included a generous compensation package for his injuries, thought Daly. Either that or Tessa Jordan had given Dermot the wrong address. Perhaps he should have phoned first before allowing the suspense to build. He rapped the front door.

  After a while, an elderly man walked stiffly from around the side of the house.

  “I don’t use the front door,” he said, reaching out to shake Daly’s hand. “As you can see, I have a problem with steps.”

  His hand grip was bone-cracking. Daly felt as though the energy of the man’s entire body and personality had been transmitted through the handshake.

  “Detective Kenneth Mitchell?” asked Daly.

  A look of concern flashed across Mitchell’s face. He reached out a hand to hold on to the steel bar that ran around the house. He looked Daly and Dermot up and down, his eyes narrowing to two flecks of flint.

  “Haven’t been called that in a long time.”

  Daly introduced himself and fished in his pocket for his ID, but the old man was already walking away.

  “I don’t want to be bothered. The past is the past. Better left that way.”

  “Oliver Jordan. What about him?”

  Mitchell turned around. His features were compact, unyielding. There was a light in his eyes, but no warmth. The same cold light that filled the lake and outlined the groping branches of the trees. The muscles began to move on his forehead and jaw.

  “What do I care about a dead informer?”

  “I’m investigating the murder of Joseph Devine and the disappearance of David Hughes. If I could just talk to you for a while.”

  Mitchell studied the ground for a moment. “Not much harm in talking, I suppose,” he said. “I served as an RUC officer for more than thirty years, and in that time I was stalked, hunted, and had my body torn apart by Republican terrorists. One morning as I drove to work, a bomb went off under my car. It was attached to the ignition. The force of it blew the clothes off me. The first thing I saw when I came to was the tattoo of the Ulster flag on my bare arm. I reached down, but couldn’t find my left leg. They found my boots twenty yards away in a ditch. I should have saved the IRA the bother and left the force when the Troubles started.”

  He glared at Daly, his eyes icy and still.

  “I just need some background information.” Daly tried to be as honest as possible. “I don’t really know why I’m here, only that I have a feeling there is something unexplained about Oliver Jordan’s disappearance. There are those who say the police never wanted to find his kidnappers. I don’t know if that’s true or false. I hope it’s not true. This is his son with me.”

  For the first time Mitchell looked genuinely unsettled. As though he were the observer of two worlds jarring together: a pair of unexpected visitors on a winter’s morning, and the memories of seventeen years earlier. Both worlds were full of pitfalls. He glanced at Daly and managed to squeeze out a smile.

  “You can come inside as my guest. If only for the pleasure of watching a PSNI officer flounder when confronted by the past.” He glanced at Dermot with curiosity. “You can come in too. I thought you were too young to be a new recruit.”

  They entered the house around the back. Through a half-opened door, Daly glimpsed a spare room full of artificial legs.

  “For the past ten years I’ve searched a replacement for the real one the IRA blew away,” said Mitchell, sitting down and removing his left leg. “The problem with prosthetics is their weight. You don’t notice how heavy your legs are because they seem to move by themselves. This one’s light, but after a few hours it’s like having a pair of forceps pinching you. Better that than being too loose, though. Those ones tend to chafe and buckle underneath. Then there’s the stump.” He lifted up what remained of his left leg. It was gray and misshapen with loose folds of skin. “It changes shape over the years. So they keep having to change the socket. The last time I was fitted, they scanned my leg with lasers. My consultant told me, without a trace of irony, that it was a giant step forward.”

  He lifted a walking stick and hobbled over to the kettle, showing a brisk indifference to his disability.

  “My mother used to say that nine-tenths of a person was willpower. The IRA could never blow those nine-tenths away.”

  Mitchell looked at his two guests. “But then, you haven’t come to listen to stories about my leg.” He shifted his amputated limb. “You know, I can still feel the tendons throbbing in my missing foot. It’s been following me all these years.” He stared at Dermot. “Like a bad memory.”

  “Can we talk about Oliver Jordan?” asked Daly.

  “I told you I don’t like talking of the past. I worked on countless murder investigations like Oliver Jordan’s; many of them involved informers and the intelligence agencies. It was a dirty little war that had to be fought. But you can’t expect me to remember every case after all these years.”

  His eyes sank into their sockets.

  “There’s a good reason why you should be able to remember more about my dad’s case,” said Dermot.

>   “What’s that?” Mitchell’s response was as quick as the crack of a whip.

  “It was the last one you ever worked upon. You retired on health grounds a month after being assigned to the investigation. March 20, 1990.”

  Mitchell sat silently. The corners of his mouth dropped into an appraising scowl.

  “Now do you remember?”

  “Listen, son. The past is the past. You’ve got to leave it behind. Nothing you can do will bring your father back. You ought to be studying at college, or partying, or learning how to hang-glide or something. Not here in this room with me.”

  “I just want the cover-up to end. I want the facts. Facts don’t lie or deceive.”

  “Nor do they forgive.” Mitchell sighed. He paused, his eyes darting back and forth. Something quick and dark had caught their attention. A reel of images from the past flitted through his mind.

  “All I can give you is my opinion. Your father was a very interesting man.”

  He returned to his tea and gave no indication of expanding upon his observation.

  “Interesting to the IRA? Or to Special Branch?” asked Daly.

  “Interesting to me. I watched many men unravel during the Troubles. Men in the security forces, neighbors, on both sides. I saw there was a void in them where there should have been pity and respect for life. Oliver Jordan was different. At least, I like to believe so.”

  “How come?” said Daly.

  “I think he managed to figure out something for himself. He lived in a Republican heartland, and the natural thing for him would have been to support the IRA in whatever they did. Oliver was a true child of the Troubles. He was only a toddler when the Civil Rights movement started. His parents were unemployed; their housing was poor. The Troubles ended any hope he would have had for a normal life for his family. Riots flared up right on his doorstep. Oliver lived and breathed in the company of Republicans. They also killed him. But Oliver was a man of courage in spite of the terrible pressure that was brought to bear upon him.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Dermot.