by Derek Fee
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Browne phoned at four thirty. The uniforms had located four nine-millimetre shells within six metres of each other and all close to the ditch that separated the road from the field. The shells had already been bagged and were on their way to FSNI. Wilson congratulated Browne for his good work and asked after Gibson. The DS had left about an hour earlier and Browne assumed he was returning to Aughnacloy, but he hadn’t actually said where he was going. It might have been Armagh, Browne wasn’t sure. Wilson agreed to pick Browne up at the site on his way back to Belfast. He cursed the Forensic team that had examined the site directly after the shooting. They would receive a rocket from him for their incompetence. Davis was expecting him in her office at six and he wanted to visit McDevitt before returning to the station. He sent a quick message to Davis’s phone indicating that he was about to leave Aughnacloy but would be dropping in on McDevitt on the way.
McDevitt looked more like a pale imitation of himself than ever before as he sat up in bed eating what passed for his tea. Wilson didn’t envy McDevitt.
‘Christ, you should have told me that getting shot was so bloody painful.’ McDevitt pushed his tray away. ‘As soon I get out of here I’m going to buy a Kevlar vest.’
Wilson smiled at the sign that the old McDevitt was still inside the faded facsimile sitting on the bed. ‘I take it you’re feeling sore.’
‘They’re reducing the morphine and I’m feeling the pain. And they won’t tell me when I’m getting out of here.’
‘There is an upside.’ Wilson pulled over a chair and sat down. ‘You’re still front-page news in the Chronicle. Think of the effect on the book sales.’
‘I forgot about the bloody launch.’ McDevitt looked even more crestfallen, if that was possible. ‘I’m going to miss it.’
‘It’s been postponed, but your agent insists that you attend in a wheelchair so it won’t be postponed for long. That was one hell of a PR stunt getting yourself shot to pimp your book.’
‘PR stunt my arse.’ McDevitt tried to laugh but it became a wince. ‘Have you got your hands on the bastard who shot me yet?’
‘That might take a while.’
‘Any chance I can have a baseball bat and spend some quality time with him in a cell when you catch him.’
Wilson laughed out loud. McDevitt weighed ten stone sopping wet and you’d need a microscope to find his muscles. ‘No chance, he’d take the baseball bat from you and do something unspeakable with it.’
McDevitt tried laughing again with a similar result as before. ‘OK, no more repartee, I think some of my stitches have come apart. I hear there’s a peeler outside the door.’
Wilson nodded. ‘Just a precaution.’
‘Thanks. I researched that guy Hanna and he’s very bad medicine.’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’ Wilson was particularly glad that McDevitt hadn’t used the expression ‘bad dude’. He preferred Belfast slang. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t pass the tip along to me when you saw how dangerous he was.’
McDevitt put on a silly face. ‘They tell me that I’m out of here tomorrow.’
‘Arrangements have been made to transfer you to the Royal.’
‘You made the arrangements?’
‘Reid helped out.’
‘Do I actually remember her kissing me?’
‘In your dreams, she gave you a peck on the forehead.’
McDevitt put on a sad face then smiled. He held out his right hand and after a slight hesitation Wilson took it. Their hands were clasped together. ‘You’re a good friend, Ian.’
Wilson noticed a tear in the corner of McDevitt’s right eye. He stood up. It was time to go before the scene became tearful. ‘I’ll check that the arrangements go as planned and I’ll see you tomorrow evening.’
McDevitt nodded and let go of Wilson’s hand. He watched the big man head for the door and wished that he would turn around before he left. Of course, he didn’t, and McDevitt lay back slightly disappointed. He wanted desperately to be Ian Wilson’s best friend and he hoped that he was. He wanted to feel privileged.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
When Gibson left the murder site he hadn’t travelled back to Aughnacloy, nor had he returned to his office in Armagh. Instead he had driven east to the small village of Benburb. He had the feeling of the sand shifting and a precipice opening up beneath his feet. He’d watched Wilson at work in the living room of the Kieltys’ farmhouse and at Hunter’s manse and in the setting up of the incident room. Wilson was methodical and Gibson realised that before long everyone involved with the shooting was going to be apprehended. His stomach was churning as he parked his police Skoda outside a non-descript building. The Orange Hall in Benburb had been erected in 1910 and was a simple concrete block construction. There were two other cars parked in front of the building one of which was Hunter’s Ford. Gibson pushed open the red front door and saw that the building consisted of one large room. Orange Lodge paraphernalia covered the walls and a large Union Jack hung on the back wall. Directly beneath the flag two men were sitting on cheap wooden chairs. Gibson walked to the right side of the room, picked up a chair and joined the men.
Walter Hanna stood and offered Gibson his hand. The two men shook hands and Gibson placed his chair directly facing Hanna. They had only met once before when Hanna had visited his father’s house ten years previously. Hanna was lean to the point of cadaverous. His long limbs seemed to spread out like an octopus’s tentacles from his chair. His narrow face was paler than any farmer Gibson had ever met. He looked into it and was immediately struck by the two dark eyes that stared back at him. They seemed to be looking directly into his soul. Gibson averted his eyes and looked at Hunter. Despite the chilly room, sweat was running down the side of Hunter’s face. Gibson surmised that the parson had probably been sweating since Wilson’s visit.
‘Bit of a fuck-up.’ Hanna was the first to speak.
‘You could say that.’ Gibson reluctantly returned his gaze to Hanna.
‘Kielty dropped us in the shit by contacting McDevitt,’ Hanna continued. ‘We could have shot the old bastard and nobody would have cared. But McDevitt is a different kettle of fish. McDevitt got us Wilson and put us where we are.’
‘Which is completely screwed,’ Hunter interjected. ‘He’s after me for hatching that story that Kielty was suffering from dementia. He went to Hook’s office when he was finished with me. Hook had already bailed, but don’t have any false hopes that Hook is going to hold out when he is eventually questioned.’
Hanna ignored Hunter and concentrated his attention on Gibson. ‘Where exactly are we?’
‘So far there isn’t enough evidence to connect you or your boy with the murder. We have the slugs and the shells but no gun. It would be wise to ditch the weapon.’ He could see from Hanna’s face that that was not going to happen. ‘McDevitt will probably finger you, but he was shot several minutes later and his state of mind and recollections might be suspect. The problem is Wilson. I’ve watched him work over the past few days. He’s no Sherlock Holmes but he is methodical and very experienced. He knows he’s dealing with a jigsaw and he’s prepared to put it together piece by piece. He may not have you at the moment, but I wouldn’t give odds against him getting there in the end.’
Hanna smiled a thin-lipped smile. ‘Better men than Wilson have tried to put me away.’
‘I doubt that.’ Gibson was uneasy in Hanna’s company. He was there because Hanna had some hold over his father. While he was curious about what it might be, he really didn’t want to know in case it would change forever his feelings towards a man he loved. But he cursed his father for putting him in a room with this man.
‘Wilson is expendable,’ Hanna said.
Gibson’s eyebrows rose. He’d heard that Hanna was ruthless, but he didn’t think that he was mad. ‘Right now you’re in a hole, my advice is to stop digging.’
‘I know people, maybe they can have him shifted.’
‘You can try, but every move you make will risk exposure.’
‘I don’t like to find myself in a corner,’ Hanna said. ‘And when I do, I generally come out fighting.’
‘You have to do what you have to do.’ Gibson picked up his chair and returned it to the sidewall. ‘If I were in your boots, I’d concentrate on prayer. As for me, I’m done. Consider my father’s debt paid in full.’
Hanna stood up ‘It’s paid in full when I say that it’s paid in full. And you’re done with me when I say you’re done.’
Gibson walked slowly towards the door at the end of the room. He felt sad for himself. He’d been taught never to give away your power to someone else. The man who had taught him that had probably succeeded in wrecking his career.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
‘Tell me.’ Chief Superintendent Yvonne Davis handed Wilson a glass of Jameson and sat back with her own glass in hand. She toasted him silently and drank. ‘Give me some good news.’
‘We have a prime suspect.’
‘How soon can we expect an arrest?’
‘A while.’ Wilson sipped his whiskey. Why did alcohol taste so good at the end of a hard day? He looked at Davis, her facial colour was high and he wondered whether the glass in her hand was her first of the day. He hoped so because he’d seen more than one meteoric career shattered in the bottom of a bottle. He explained that the only evidence he had was McDevitt’s identification and they both knew what a good defence barrister would do with that. ‘We have to build this case on a firm foundation. Walter Hanna has been Teflon in the past and we have to assume that there’s a reason for that. He’s not your average criminal. He’s either very lucky, very well-connected or very smart. And I don’t want luck or his smarts to punch a hole in my case.’
She sipped her drink. ‘But we’re making progress?’
‘We have the slugs and the shells. We know the gun has been used in killings in mid-Ulster and we’re pretty sure our man was present when Kielty and McDevitt were shot. This is not a case where we drag this guy in and expect him to roll over. That’s not going to happen.’ His phone pinged and he looked at the message. It was from Reid: Drink, Crown? He texted back: 15 min, before returning the phone to his pocket.
‘I’ll pass on the message that an arrest is imminent.’ She looked at him quizzically before finishing her drink and putting her glass away in the drawer. She guessed that he had probably received a text from the pathologist about meeting up. It was good that someone had plans. She wouldn’t get back to her flat until after ten and then it would be beans on toast while watching the news, followed by bed with a mediocre book. She envied those who actually had a life. The weekends were the worst. There was a general impression that she was a workaholic because her car could be seen in the parking lot every Saturday. The truth was that she had nothing else to do.
Wilson finished his drink and stood up. ‘Have a good evening, Boss. And thanks for the drink. We’ll celebrate when I wrap this investigation up.’ He went to the door and exited.
She picked up the phone and called Nicholson’s office. The ACC wouldn’t be available until twenty thirty hours. Was this really the life she had given up her family for? She was happy to see the end of her husband as he was a prick long before she’d had a career, but at least she could have built a relationship with her children. Now their principal reason for contacting her was to ask for money. She knew instinctively that Wilson would never be welcomed into the inner sanctum of the PSNI in Castlereagh. He wasn’t the right stuff but she thought he was probably worth more than the whole fifth floor at HQ. They might reject him but he had already rejected them. She opened the drawer of her desk and withdrew the glass.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Stephanie Reid was sitting in the snug at the Crown re-reading the e-mail from her mother. Two days, she had only two days to stiffen her resolve in order to meet the woman who had been the strongest influence in her life. She was aware of the source of her heightened sense of responsibility. As a rebellious teenager, she had been thrust into the role of surrogate mother for her younger brother. Much of what she was – her perseverance, her resilience and her rejection of marriage as a state – could be attributed to the rejection she felt at the departure of her mother. She sipped her second gin and tonic. Dutch courage wouldn’t get her through what was about to happen so she tried to accept that it was simply another trial she would have to face. It was part of her ethos to always face up to a challenge. In her mind there wasn’t ‘fight or flight’, there was only fight.
In the end her mother had booked a room at the Fitzwilliam Hotel on Great Victoria Street, which was a blessing as Reid had not wanted to put her up in her apartment and had decided to refuse such a request. The booking at the hotel meant that their meeting would be drinks, dinner or lunch. She would opt for drinks if she had any part in the decision as that would ensure minimum contact. Why didn’t the damn woman stay where she was? She envied her brother, it would be so convenient to just think of her as being dead. Reid thought of contacting her father to ask his advice, but it seemed peculiar to her for a thirty–eight-year-old professor of pathology at a major hospital to have to ask for her daddy’s advice. She finished her drink and was about to order another when the door opened and Wilson entered. He came immediately to her and planted a big kiss on her lips. He’d been drinking, she could taste the whiskey on him. He sat down next to her, forcing her to push over on the seat.
Wilson glanced at the empty glass on the table. ‘I see you started without me. What’s the occasion?’
She picked up her mobile and showed him the message.
He read quickly and then pushed the bell for service. The barman’s head appeared in the hatch and Wilson ordered the drinks. ‘No sweat, she’s just dropping by.’
‘So, you won’t mind meeting her?’
The hatch opened and the barman passed a pint of Guinness and a gin and tonic through as Wilson slid a ten-pound note along the counter. The intervention of the barman gave him time to consider her remark. As she had spoken, a mental picture of Kate’s mother flashed through his brain. It wasn’t the smiling face of their lunch at Deanes but the hate-fuelled face that had stared at him across the visitor’s gallery at Laganside Courts during the Cummerford trial. He wondered what exactly he had done to elicit such hatred. He was probably guilty of insensitivity after Kate had lost their child but did it really deserve the look that Helen had bestowed on him? He lifted up his glass and touched it to hers. ‘If that’s what you want, although you never struck me as someone who needs a crutch.’
She poured tonic into her gin and sipped from the glass. ‘Change of subject. I think that you may be about to get angry with me.’
‘Never.’ He smiled.
‘Harry Graham called me up this afternoon. It appears that he’s having trouble tracking down Gillian McAuley, the mother of the young boy.’
Wilson frowned. He hadn’t spoken to Harry all day. ‘Harry’s one of the best, it’s only a matter of time.’
‘I called up the Chronicle and gave them the story,’ she blurted.
He was raising his glass and stopped in mid-air. ‘You did what?’
‘I knew you were going to be angry. Harry has been running around Belfast checking out where she might be, but he drew a blank.’
‘It takes time, Stephanie.’ Wilson put his glass back on the table. He hadn’t told Davis that they were looking into the death of the boy. ‘You didn’t say anything about the squad looking into the death?’
‘No, I just pitched it as a human interest story. The young boy had died from his injuries and we had no idea where his mother was.’
Wilson rubbed his hand across his forehead. He had very little regard for the higher echelons in Castlereagh as people but they weren’t stupid. They could add two and two and arrive at four. There would be an assumption that his hand was somewhere in the affair. He leaned across and rubbed her hand. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be OK.’ The person wh
o would certainly be getting an earful was Harry Graham. What the hell had he been thinking?
Wilson’s mobile rang. He looked at the caller ID and saw it was Davis. He answered and listened for a few minutes before speaking ‘I just found out myself . . . Yes, she’s with me now . . . No, I wasn’t aware. This business in Aughnacloy has had all my attention.’ There was another period of silence. ‘OK, I’ll put Harry Graham on it. I’ll be in your office at eight.’ He ended the call and then texted his colleagues to rearrange the morning’s team briefing for eight thirty.
‘I’m sorry.’ Reid stroked his shoulder.
‘A bad day has just got immeasurably worse.’ He drained his glass and pushed the bell. ‘Davis was only short of laughing on the phone and I’m sure she would have if she weren’t in Castlereagh. The Chronicle has already been on looking for a reaction from the PSNI to the death of the young boy. I’m sure that there’ll be something suitable in the paper tomorrow. The word “tragedy” will no doubt be bandied around and the PSNI will be looking into the death. Hopefully they won’t find out that we’ve already been looking into it.’
The barman’s head appeared and he passed two drinks in without an order being placed. Wilson paid and placed the drinks on the table.
She held his hand. ‘I’ll wear a dunce’s cap and stand in the corner if it will help you feel better.’
He picked up his pint. ‘I’ll think of a suitable punishment but that dunce’s cap thing is intriguing.’
CHAPTER FORTY
The Chronicle was prominently displayed on Davis’s desk when Wilson walked into her office. She pointed at the chair facing her desk. ‘Do not bullshit me, Ian.’ She picked up the newspaper and passed it to him. ‘Although it’s not exactly stated there is an insinuation that the PSNI is already looking into the death of this child. Please tell me that it’s not true.’
