The Ghosts of Belfast (The Twelve) jli-1

by Stuart Neville

  When he took a pair of pliers from his pocket, Fegan asked, “Can I go?”

  “No stomach for it any more?”

  “No.”

  “All right,” Caffola said. “You say you had nothing to do with it, that’s good enough for me.”

  Fegan opened the door to the corridor. A spark flared in his temple, and he looked back over his shoulder. The two UDR men raised their fingers to Caffola’s bald head.

  “Another time,” Fegan said.

  “Yeah,” Caffola said as he lifted the Lithuanian back onto the chair. “See you again, Gerry.”

  Fegan turned his back on them and walked through the corridor and the bar beyond, out onto the street where Patsy Toner waited in his Jaguar.

  5

  The Minister of State for Northern Ireland, Edward Hargreaves MP, teed off in afternoon sunlight. He shaded his eyes as the ball soared up and away into the sky above the Old Course at St Andrews. It drifted, veering to the left, and began a slow descent. It bounced three times and disappeared into a patch of gorse.

  “Bastard,” he said, and handed the club to the caddy without looking at him.

  “Bad luck, Minister,” the third man present said as he placed his tee. A gun bulged at the small of Compton’s back as he bent over.

  Hargreaves was glad his new Personal Protection Officer was reasonably affable, unlike the sour fellow he’d had before, but did they have to give him someone so good at golf? Compton’s perfect swing sent the ball off to land precisely between two bunkers, an easy chip away from the green.

  Today had been rotten so far, and would likely worsen. The phone at Hargreaves’s hotel bedside had woken him at eight, bearing bad news. Hargreaves had found Michael McKenna to be entirely objectionable on the few occasions they’d met, so he felt no grief, but the trouble his killing would stir could derail years of hard work.

  The hard work of Hargreaves and the Secretary of State’s predecessors, admittedly, but still.

  God help him, he might even have to visit the forsaken place again this month. He’d just returned from a solid week there, and surely that was enough? Had it been up to Hargreaves he would have cut the hellish waste of land adrift years ago. But there were those in government, and in royalty, who felt some misguided sense of duty to the six counties across the sea, so it was his burden to carry.

  Now Northern Ireland’s factions had finally agreed to share governance amongst themselves, Hargreaves’s role was largely a matter of passing papers on to the Secretary for signing, so it wasn’t altogether a disaster. Just as long as the natives behaved, that was.

  The phone in his pocket vibrated. The call he dreaded. He answered it with a heavy heart.

  A woman’s voice said, “The Chief Constable is ready to speak with you now, Minister. It’s a secure line. Go ahead.”

  “Good afternoon, Geoff,” Hargreaves said. “What have you got?”

  “Not a great deal,” Pilkington said.

  Hargreaves didn’t like the Chief Constable, but he respected him. Geoff Pilkington was a hard man who had worked the streets of Manchester before climbing the ranks. He was one of the few Chief Constables who had done any real police work in his career, rather than using a public school and Oxbridge education to grease his way into the position. He took grief from no one, but had a keen political savvy that belied his rough exterior. He knew when to shout, and when to whisper. If Pilkington had aimed for Parliament instead of the senior ranks of the force, Hargreaves was sure he’d have been in the Cabinet by now. He had taken the top job in the Police Service of Northern Ireland as it completed its transition from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and it had been a testing time. But he had weathered it, achieving the impossible by earning the respect of the whole of Northern Ireland society, albeit begrudgingly from some quarters.

  “Who was it?” Hargreaves asked. “Loyalists? Dissidents?”

  “Neither, we think. It was done at close range, no sign of a struggle. We’re pretty sure it was someone he knew.”

  “His own people?” Hargreaves walked after his ball, Compton and the caddy following.

  “Unlikely,” Pilkington said. “There’s been no indication of a split. Even if there was, they wouldn’t want to rock the boat. Not now they’ve got their feet under the table at Stormont.”

  “Then who? I have to tell the Secretary something.”

  “We know he was doing business with some Lithuanians, bringing illegals up over the border from Dublin. Girls, mostly, for the sex trade.”

  “I didn’t think McKenna’s lot were into all that. More the Loyalists’ forte.”

  “The official line from the party is no criminal activity at all, but they don’t control what individuals choose to do. Leaves people like McKenna with a little more freedom to operate. If there’s money in it, they’ll do it. And whatever the party says, the money still flows uphill.”

  It never ceased to amaze Hargreaves that people would vote for criminals in full knowledge of their nature. He doubted there was a more cynical electorate in the world. The average Northern Irish pleb could read between the lines of a speech better than any professional political analyst, disbelieving every treacherous word. Yet still they voted as predictably, election after election. He wondered why they didn’t just have a sectarian headcount every four years and be done with it.

  He’d desperately hoped for a Cabinet spot, anything, in the last reshuffle. As it turned out, he didn’t even get Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the job no one wanted. No, he was the fucking assistant to the job no one wanted. He ground his teeth as he walked.

  “So, do you have anything to link them?” Hargreaves asked.

  “Not directly. We’ve very little solid information to go on at the minute.”

  “What do you have?” Hargreaves stopped to allow Compton and the caddy to catch up. He would bring Compton jogging in the morning, get him match fit.

  “We’ve got his last movements. He owned a bar on the Springfield Road. His brother’s name’s on the licence, but it was his. He gave a drunk a lift home from there, then the barman received a call from him thirty to forty-five minutes later. He said he’d left the drunk home, then gone to the docks to meet someone on a matter of business. We’re still checking CCTV footage from the route, but what we’ve got so far shows him driving alone. The last camera caught him on York Street, turning under the M3 flyover and into the docks. We reckon whoever did it met him there. Forensics are still going over the car, but I doubt they’ll get much. It was a clean job. Professional.”

  Hargreaves felt a small trickle of relief. “So, we don’t think it was political, then? I don’t need to tell you how troublesome it would be otherwise.”

  “No, Minister, you don’t. Early indications are a business deal gone sour. We’ve already questioned the drunk, but he didn’t know much, despite who he is.”

  The trickle of relief halted, and Hargreaves set off towards his ball again. “What do you mean? Who is he?”

  “Gerald Fegan. He’s suspected of as many as twelve murders, two while he was on compassionate leave from prison for his mother’s funeral. He was convicted of the butcher’s shop bombing on the Shankill in 1988. Three died in that, including a mother and her baby. He was a foot soldier, and one of their best, or worst, depending on your point of view. A killer, plain and simple.”

  “And he isn’t a suspect?”

  “Not at the moment. He’s been quiet as a mouse since he got early release in . . .”

  Hargreaves heard the shuffling of paper.

  “At the start of 2000. From what I understand, he’d been suffering some psychological problems before his release, and he’s taken to drink in recent times.”

  The trickle of relief started again. “I see,” Hargreaves said as he neared the gorse patch that had devoured his ball. “So, it’s not political. Let’s try and keep it that way, shall we?”

  “Of course, Minister. The politicians on all sides are gearing up to make the m
ost of it, but that’s only to be expected. Don’t worry, we’ll keep a lid on it.”

  “Good man,” Hargreaves said. He hung up and returned the phone to his pocket as he kicked at the gorse. “Now, where’s that bastard ball?”

  6

  The whetstone glided along the guitar’s neck, skimming the frets. Fegan loved the sensation it sent through his hand, his wrist, on into his forearm and up to his shoulder: the feeling of oiled stone sliding on metal. As the boat-shaped block swept from one end of the fingerboard to the other, it ground away years of wear. Too much pressure would destroy the frets. Not enough would leave the finish uneven, and the guitar unplayable. It was a question of balance and patience.

  Ronnie Lennox had taught him that.

  Fegan had spent hours in the Maze Prison’s workshop, watching the old man at his craft. Ronnie hated being penned up with the rest of the Loyalists, so the guards let him pass the time in his own corner of the woodwork room. The Republican prisoners tolerated his presence when they had the use of the place, thinking him harmless, and even let him teach them a thing or two. Fegan always paid close attention. Ronnie’s delicate hands bore a myriad of scars, decades of cuts and abrasions earned at the shipyard. He’d been a ship’s carpenter before he did the awful thing that sent him to prison. Like so many men who worked there, he had been left with the wheezy rattle of asbestosis in his chest.

  Fegan remembered Ronnie’s hands most of all, and he knew why. They were like his father’s. When he could get the work, Fegan’s father had also been a chippie. Except, since he was Catholic, the shipyard never had any use for him.

  Mixed in with the bad times, when he came home drunk and stinking, there were good times. Like the day, when Fegan was very small, that his father borrowed a car and took him and his mother to Portaferry on the shore of Strangford Lough. They went across the Lough and back three times just for the pleasure of riding the ferry. Then his father went to the pub while Fegan and his weeping mother got the bus back to Belfast. He didn’t come home for three days.

  Of details from those good times, few as they were, it was his father’s hands Fegan remembered best. He recalled the coarse and bony feel of them, the hardness and the warmth, long fingers stained orange by nicotine.

  Fegan was nine years old when he last held them. It was in his parents’ small bedroom on a cold morning. The wallpaper bubbled and peeled with damp. He remembered how the mildew smell mixed with his mother’s floral scent when she entered. She sat down on the bed, picked up a hairbrush, and scraped it across his scalp.

  A few minutes passed before she asked, “Who were you talking to when I came in, love?”

  “No one,” he said.

  The boar hairs scratched like nails. His collar felt like fingers wrapped around his neck, making a tickly sickness at the base of his throat. He watched her in the mirror over her good mahogany dressing table. He stood with his hands on the cool wood. Her eyes were red and wet.

  “You were talking to someone. Was it your friends? The ones you fib about?”

  “No,” he said.

  She swiped the hairbrush across his backside and the sting forced him up on his tiptoes, his buttocks clenched.

  She resumed brushing. “Don’t be telling lies today of all days, Gerald Fegan. Who were you talking to?”

  He sniffed once and stared hard at her reflection. “Daddy,” he said. The brush stopped at his crown. The bristles gnawed at his scalp. She blinked once and a crystal bead escaped her left eye. “Don’t,” she said.

  “It was Daddy.”

  “Your Daddy’s going in the ground today.” She placed the brush on the bed beside her and gripped his shoulders hard. Her breath burned his skin. “They’ll screw the lid down soon, but it’s still open. I didn’t make you look at him because I knew you didn’t want to. But I’ll make you look at him now if you tell me fibs like that. Do I have to make you look at him?”

  Fegan wanted to shake his head to please her, but his desire for her to know was greater. “He was holding my hand,” he said.

  She spun him around to face her. Brilliant light flashed in his head as her palm slammed against his cheek. He staggered, but she held firm to his shoulders.

  “You listen to me, Gerry.” Her face became pointed like a bird’s, pale and fierce. “No more of this . . . this . . . devilment. No more. Do you hear me?”

  He opened his mouth to argue, and another lightning bolt struck his cheek.

  “Not one more word. You don’t see anyone. You don’t talk to anyone. You turn away from them. Do you want people to think you’re mad? Do you want to end up in the hospital with all the soft-headed old men living in their own filth?” She shook him hard. “Do you? Is that what you want?”

  Blinded by tears, Fegan shook his head. He wanted to wail but the cry stayed trapped in his chest. It swelled between his ears until at last air came tearing into his lungs. It burst out again in hacking sobs. He collapsed into his mother’s bosom and let her arms circle him.

  “Oh, wee pet, I’m sorry. Shush, shush, shush. Quiet, now. If you’re quiet they’ll leave you alone. Always be quiet.”

  She took his wet face in her hands and smiled. “Turn away from them and be quiet. The devil can’t go where he’s not wanted. Do you understand?”

  He nodded and sniffed.

  “Good boy,” she said. “Now go and polish your shoes.”

  Thirty-six years ago. Fegan didn’t like to think of time, and how he could never hold on to it. But sometimes it couldn’t be avoided. He was twenty-six when he went inside and thirty-eight when he got out. The seven years since had drifted past almost unnoticed. Nearly half a lifetime wasted. Fegan shook the thought away and turned his mind back to his task.

  He sat at the table beneath his window, his shirtsleeves rolled up. In the daytime it gave him light to work. At night, a desk lamp arched over the tools placed neatly about him. For this job he had masking tape, files, wire wool and olive oil. He set the stone on some newspaper and used a soft cloth to wipe away the swarf, the tiny specks of metal left by the abrasion on the masked-off pieces of fingerboard.

  The radio on the sideboard murmured soft blues music. Fegan didn’t understand it, the droning chords and the mournful voices, but he had a notion of learning to play the C.F. Martin guitar when it was finished. Ronnie had said it was a collector’s piece, but guitars weren’t for collecting. They were for playing, he said. So Fegan listened to the radio while he worked, hoping some of its music might seep into him.

  When the music stopped and the presenter said the news was coming up, Fegan reached across and turned it off. Everyone was talking about McKenna. Politicians, cops, security analysts - the reporters had even started interviewing one another in their rush to squeeze every last drop of blood out of the story.

  Fegan picked up the whetstone and ran it along the fingerboard again, back and forth, the rhythm soothing him. Nine o’clock. He hadn’t had a drink tonight. Like every other night, he promised himself he wouldn’t. Somewhere beneath his heart he knew he would break that promise. He knew they would come again tonight, even though he had given McKenna to the boy. They wanted more.

  They wanted Caffola.

  Fegan swept the stone back and forth, smooth movements flowing from his arm. Be quiet, he thought. Turn away from them and be quiet.

  Balance and patience.

  A tingling gathered in his temples the way electricity hangs in the air before a storm. He closed his eyes and let the stone’s rhythm fall in step with his heart.

  Balance and patience.

  Sparks flashed behind his eyes.

  Fegan put the stone down and lowered the guitar to the felt sheet that protected its lacquered finish. He stood, went to the sideboard, and poured two fingers of Jameson’s and the same of water. The whiskey warmed his center as the shadows crept along the walls.

  Balance and patience.

  7

  “So, who do you think got McKenna?” McSorley asked as he hauled
the steering wheel to the left.

  Campbell looked back over his shoulder to where the old man lay on the van’s cold floor, whimpering inside the pillowcase that had been placed over his head.

  “Don’t worry about him,” McSorley said.

  Campbell returned his attention to the winding country road, involuntarily pressing his foot against the worn carpeting, trying to brake for McSorley. He’d waited for his mobile to ring all day. He had to force himself not to check for missed calls every ten minutes. The anticipation gnawed at him.

  “Well?” McSorley prompted. “Who do you reckon?”

  “Whoever it was has got to be fucking crazy,” Campbell said. “Or stupid. They won’t get away with it. The boys won’t let it go. They’ll break the ceasefire if they have to.”