The Final Silence

by Stuart Neville

  There were illegal clubs like this scattered around Belfast, all of them run by paramilitaries of one stripe or another. Places where hard drinking was done by hard men, day or night.

  At one of the tables, in the darkest corner, sat a lone man. Patterson headed towards him, Lennon following. The man stared at them both as they approached, his face like red-veined marble. Pushing seventy, Lennon guessed, but still strong. He kept his thick tattooed forearms across his belly, didn’t offer to shake Patterson’s hand.

  ‘This is Dixie Stoops,’ Patterson said. ‘Dixie, this is the fella I was telling you about.’

  Dixie let his gaze crawl from one man to the other while he lifted a can of Harp lager from the table and took a swig.

  ‘I know your face,’ he said. ‘You were all over the news at lunchtime. They said you killed that wee girl.’

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ Lennon said.

  Dixie cracked a smile. ‘Funny, I said the same thing when they put me away.’

  Lennon felt the urge to slap the beer can from his hand, throw his weight around like he used to. Show Dixie who he was dealing with. But Lennon didn’t have the strength any more. Even at his advanced age, Dixie Stoops would eat him alive.

  ‘You arrested me one time,’ Dixie said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Aye. You and some uniform boys stopped the car I was in. We had a rifle and some rounds in the boot. You gave me a hiding.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Lennon said. ‘I must’ve been having a bad day.’

  ‘Not as bad as me.’

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  Dixie nodded to the chair opposite. Lennon took it as Patterson wandered off to what passed for a bar. He helped himself to a bottle of cheap import beer from one of the coolers.

  ‘So what do you want?’ Dixie asked.

  ‘Roscoe told me you might have known someone a few years back, someone I was interested in.’

  ‘Graham Carlisle,’ Dixie said. ‘The politician.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Listen, Roscoe asked me to talk to you because you’re a friend of his and I owe him a few favours. I don’t owe Graham Carlisle anything, but if I’d known you were mixed up in what happened to his daughter, I’d have stayed home.’

  Lennon held Dixie’s gaze. ‘I didn’t kill Rea Carlisle, and if I’m going to prove that, I need to find out who did. I think there’s a connection to her father’s past.’

  ‘Jesus, this sounds like one of them murder books the wife reads. All right, go on, ask whatever you’re going to ask.’

  ‘How did you know Carlisle?’

  ‘I was head of the Sydenham area when he joined the East Belfast Brigade. He was only a young lad, maybe still a teenager. He was odd, though.’

  ‘Odd how?’

  ‘Well, he was at university. At Queen’s, doing law. We never had many student types joining up. Any education we got was behind bars. I got a degree in political science. Wouldn’t think it to look at me, would you?’

  ‘Any idea why he joined?’ Lennon asked.

  ‘Because his mates from the neighbourhood did. Same reason young men join gangs everywhere. To belong to something. To be somebody. Most of the lads round here, if they couldn’t get an apprenticeship, they were fucked. They had nothing, and they knew they’d never have anything. But you put a gun in a young lad’s hand, give him someone to point it at, then he feels like he’s something. You know what I mean?’

  ‘I know,’ Lennon said. ‘Doesn’t make it right.’

  ‘I never said it did.’ Dixie shook his head. ‘Jesus, if I’d known then what I know now, I’d never have listened to the politicians – the ones who were supposed to be looking out for us – when they were getting everyone stirred up. I’d have got the fuck out and made a decent life for myself.’

  He leaned forward, rested his forearms on the table, making the tattoos writhe. ‘See, that’s what was so strange about Graham Carlisle. He had the brains to pass his Eleven-Plus and get into a good school, and then on to university. He could’ve made something of himself, and he did make something of himself. So I don’t know what he was doing with the likes of us. Anyway, he stopped active service around the time he got married, but the command wanted him around as an adviser. Strategy, the law, whatever. And he did a good job. They didn’t listen to him as much as they should have, they still don’t, but things would’ve been worse without him.’

  ‘You sound like you admire him,’ Lennon said.

  ‘Admire him?’ Dixie snorted. ‘I hate the slimy fucker. But he’s done a bit of good, here and there. See, it means we’ve got a direct line up to Stormont. I know by your face, you think that’s not right. But if it wasn’t for the likes of Graham Carlisle, people round here wouldn’t have a voice up on the hill. The rest of the politicians, and I mean the Unionists, the ones supposed to be on our side, they think we’re dog shit on the streets.’

  Lennon asked, ‘Exactly how involved was he, back in the day?’

  ‘He was at the front line at one time, but not for long.’

  ‘You mean, carrying out actions?’

  Dixie nodded. ‘Aye. But he got a sickener early on, so he backed off after that.’

  ‘A sickener? Doing what?’

  Dixie’s gaze flicked towards Roscoe at the far end of the room, made sure he wasn’t within earshot.

  ‘I’m guessing you’re not here officially, right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Lennon said.

  ‘This is between you and me. Goes no further. You understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  Dixie cleared his throat and started talking.

  ‘Graham had not long joined up, he’d been on a few training exercises, collected a bit of protection money, that sort of thing. Nothing serious. But him and a couple of his mates wanted to prove themselves, show me and the Brigade commanders they had the balls for the job. So they called up one of the Catholic taxi firms, ordered a cab out of south Belfast, near the museum, I think it was. Anyway, they’d got a gun from somewhere, don’t ask me where. And they waited for this taxi to show up, and pop, they shot the driver dead.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Lennon said.

  ‘Well, that was enough for Graham Carlisle,’ Dixie said. ‘He didn’t have the nerve to get his hands dirty like the rest of us. So he made sure he got his degree and all the rest of it.’

  ‘Who were these mates?’ Lennon asked.

  Dixie shook his head. ‘I’m here to talk about Graham Carlisle. I’m not naming anyone else.’

  Lennon took the photograph from his pocket and placed it on the tabletop. ‘Take a look at this,’ he said.

  Dixie fished a pair of reading glasses from his tracksuit bottoms and perched them on his nose. He lifted the picture and studied it at arm’s length. A sigh wheezed out of his barrel chest.

  ‘All right. I couldn’t tell you who the boys at the back are,’ he said, ‘I could be one of them, you never know. But that’s Raymond Drew there on the left. Graham married his sister. Lovely wee girl, she was. Raymond was a horrible cunt, though. One of those quiet boys, you know? You can never tell what they’re thinking, but you can see they’re going a hundred miles an hour behind their eyes. And Howard was the same.’

  ‘Howard?’ Lennon asked.

  Dixie put the photograph back on the table, turned it to face Lennon, and pointed to the middle figure in the front row. ‘Howard . . . Howard . . . hang on, what was his second name? Monaghan. Aye, Howard Monaghan. The Sparkle, they used to call him.’

  Lennon looked at the young man between Carlisle and Drew. For the first time, really. He’d been distracted by the other two and hadn’t paid much mind to the man in the middle.

  ‘Why’d they call him that?’ he asked.

  ‘Because he was an electrician by trade. A spark. Apprenticed in the shipyard, I think, but he was a bit, you know, light on his feet. What my auld da would’ve called a jessie, a nancy boy. So they started calling him the Sparkle in the sh
ipyard, and it followed him around after that. He didn’t seem to mind it.’

  ‘What was his relationship to Drew and Carlisle?’

  ‘I don’t know about Graham, but him and Raymond were close. They met in the merchant navy, and they were tight as anything ever since. Sometimes they’d go across the water together for work, when they could find it in the same place. Raymond was laying bricks, and the Sparkle was doing the wiring. There were a few whispers among the boys about them, how close they were.’

  Lennon asked, ‘You mean, they were gay? They were a couple?’

  ‘No, not that. A lot of the lads didn’t like queers, but they never bothered me. What a fella does in his own home is up to him, so long as he’s not hurting anyone, that’s what I think. But the lads in the Brigade would never tolerate it. Either way, that’s not what Raymond and the Sparkle were. They just shared things, did everything together. They chased after women together, and if they couldn’t get one, the lads used to say they’d settle for each other. But I never really believed that. Not after the way the Sparkle reacted.’

  ‘Reacted to what?’ Lennon asked.

  ‘We were drinking late one night in a place like this, but over on the Shankill. Raymond and the Sparkle were there. They never drank much, not like the rest of us, but they were hanging around anyway. One of the boys, Jimmy Mercer, started slagging them, you know, trying to get a bit of banter going. Asked them what they got up to when no one was looking. So Howard, the Sparkle, he lit on him. Near took the head off him before Raymond pulled him away. That’s what I remember the most, Raymond with his arms around the Sparkle, whispering to him, calming him down.’

  Lennon looked at the photograph again, at the young man in the middle. Studied the face. Fine-boned, sharp-eyed, pretty compared to Raymond’s flat features.

  ‘Is he still around?’ Lennon asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Dixie said. ‘I haven’t seen him in, God, more than twenty years. That was at the funeral for Raymond’s wife. I noticed him sort of hovering in the background, watching everyone.’

  ‘You didn’t speak to him?’

  ‘No. He’d been drummed out of the Brigade long before then.’

  ‘What for?’ Lennon asked.

  The corners of Dixie’s mouth turned down in disgust. ‘There was a couple dealing speed and cannabis out of a flat towards Holywood. Would’ve been no problem, but they weren’t paying anything back to the Brigade. So a few boys were sent out to have a word, nothing too rough, just let them know they had to throw a few quid our way if they wanted to stay in business. The Sparkle – Howard – he went with them. But things got out of hand. The Sparkle went mad on them, gave both of them an awful doing. Put them in hospital. One of the boys, a friend of mine, told me afterwards. Said it was like he was taking something out on them, something hateful. My mate told me he’d never seen the like of it, and this boy’s seen plenty. Said it scared him. He tried to stop it, but he couldn’t, said the Sparkle was like a mad dog. Raymond wasn’t there to calm him. I think that’s what Raymond did for the Sparkle: kept him under control, stopped him going over the line. After that, no one wanted the Sparkle about the place any more. So he was cut off and told not to come back. That was maybe thirty years ago.’

  Lennon lifted the photograph, looked from one face to the next. His eyes were drawn back to Howard Monaghan, the Sparkle, the sharp lines of his mouth, the clear blue of his eyes.

  And with a cold realisation that crackled through his mind, Lennon knew he had seen this man before.

  ‘Roscoe,’ he called.

  Patterson ambled back from the bar, sucking at his bottle of beer. ‘What?’

  ‘I need you to drive me somewhere.’

  ‘I’m not your bloody taxi service.’

  Lennon looked up at him. ‘Please. One last favour. I need this.’

  Patterson and Dixie exchanged a glance.

  ‘All right,’ Patterson said. ‘Come on.’

  41

  FLANAGAN WALKED TOWARDS her office, a plastic-packed sandwich and a bottle of water in her hands. Her appetite had been close to nil since the diagnosis at the clinic on Friday, but after the press call, her stomach had begun grumbling. Hours later, it hadn’t let up, forcing her to go out and find a newsagent’s shop with a cooler.

  She arrived at her door, absent-mindedly reached for the handle, and opened it. Only when the door swung inward did she remember that she’d locked it as she left.

  DCI Dan Hewitt looked up from where he stood hunched over the drawers of the filing cabinet, his fingers dipped between the sheets of paper.

  Flanagan froze on the threshold.

  She knew what he was looking for, and that knowledge must have been clear on her face. The papers she’d taken from Lennon’s apartment lay inside the locked drawer of her desk. A few more minutes, along with a little brute force, and he would have found the file.

  ‘Can I help you with something?’ she asked.

  Hewitt removed his fingers from the filing cabinet drawer, pushed it closed, and put his hands in his pockets. ‘I was just looking for . . . uh . . . I thought I might have left . . .’

  Flanagan left the door open and walked towards her desk. She placed the sandwich and water there and waited while Hewitt desperately scrambled for a lie.

  Eventually, he stopped, and his expression turned from barely concealed panic back to the smug self-confidence he’d worn the last time she saw him.

  ‘I believe you searched Jack’s apartment yesterday morning,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  She moved to the other side of the desk, kept it between him and her.

  ‘I went through the list of items you took,’ he said.

  ‘That list is none of your business.’

  He smiled. ‘I’m C3, Intelligence Branch. Everything is my business.’

  She did not retreat from his hard stare.

  ‘There was one thing missing from the list,’ he said, circling the desk, coming closer. ‘I heard a whisper you’d found a file there. That you took it along with all the other stuff. But I didn’t see it on the list.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, a tremor creeping into her voice.

  ‘Yes you do,’ he said. Close, now. Close enough for her to smell his aftershave. ‘Let’s not play games. We both know what I’m talking about. We’re all grown-ups here. You know, I can be a good friend. Or I can make this a very cold place for you. I mean, just look how things are going for Jack.’

  Flanagan swallowed, let her gaze drop. She felt his breath on her skin.

  ‘Come on,’ Hewitt said. ‘Do the right thing. You don’t want me for an enemy, I can promise you that.’

  Flanagan cursed under her breath, a weak and futile exhalation. She unfixed the key ring from her belt, unlocked and opened her desk’s top drawer, and took a step back. The thick unmarked file lay on top of a collection of loose papers.

  Hewitt looked down into the drawer, then at Flanagan.

  ‘Go on,’ she said, spitting the words at him. ‘Just bloody take it and get out.’

  He reached in with his right hand.

  The high squeal he emitted as she slammed the drawer closed on his fingers caused a feeling of deep pleasure in Flanagan such as she hadn’t felt for weeks.

  She held it closed tight. As Hewitt scrabbled at the drawer with his free hand, she leaned her hip against the metal, applied her full weight, made him squeal again, louder and longer.

  He reached for the pistol holstered at his waistband, but she was quicker. She pressed the muzzle of his own Glock 17 beneath his jaw.

  ‘Fucking crazy b—’

  Flanagan brought her lips to his ear, let him feel her teeth, and whispered, ‘You ever try to intimidate me again, I will cut your fucking balls off. Are we clear?’

  She gave the drawer one more shove with her hip, savoured his last agonised yelp, then let him go. Hewitt staggered back against the wall, clutching his bleeding
hand to his stomach, the flesh around his knuckles already swelling.

  Flanagan opened the window, looked down at the gravel-covered roof of the building’s adjoining wing. Hewitt’s pistol bounced three times before coming to rest beside a skylight. She threw the magazine after it, then turned back to him.

  ‘I’m sure someone in maintenance can lend you a ladder.’

  Hewitt stared at her, blood dripping onto his good suit.

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Be a good boy and fuck off.’

  He said nothing as he left, didn’t glance back at her.

  Flanagan slumped down into her chair and let the adrenalin rush through her, sending shakes from her centre to her fingertips.

  42

  THE BMW PULLED up outside the house at Deramore Gardens. Roscoe Patterson looked at the police tape on the front door.

  ‘Here, is this where that woman was killed?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lennon said, opening the passenger door.

  ‘You can’t go in there,’ Patterson said.

  ‘I’m not.’

  Lennon closed the door and walked across the street, watching the house with the To Let sign still standing in its overgrown garden. The same garden from which a man had watched Lennon three days before. A man of around sixty, with fine features and blue eyes.

  He heard the driver’s door slam shut.

  ‘Where you going?’ Patterson called after him.

  ‘Just wait there,’ Lennon said.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Patterson said. ‘I don’t need this sort of trouble.’

  Lennon looked back over his shoulder. ‘I’m just taking a look. Give me a minute.’

  Patterson leaned against the car, shook his head in resignation. Lennon opened the driveway gate. It turned silently on its hinge. A red-brick semi-detached house, almost a mirror image of the one Rea had inherited from her uncle.

  Lennon walked across the concrete to the window. He peered through the glass into the living room. Empty, a bare wooden floor, no furniture, nothing on the walls but ghosts of the pictures that had once hung there.