Dead Rat

by Derek Fee

  ‘This is the owner of the establishment, Owen O’Reilly,’ Browne said.

  O’Reilly marched over to the bar. ‘I heard that there was a situation at the pub, police cars and the like, and I came right over.’

  ‘Everything is under control,’ Wilson said. ‘We have a dead body in the car park and the pub will be closed until our forensic people have completed their examination of the crime scene.’

  ‘Fuckin’ hell,’ O’Reilly said. ‘A dead body! Are you sure he didn’t die of hypothermia? It was bloody cold last night and we often have vagrants sleeping out around the place.’

  ‘Certain,’ Wilson said deadpan. ‘There’s a bullet-hole in his head.’

  ‘Holy God. How long do you think we’ll be closed?’

  ‘When we’re done, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, how about a cup of coffee for me and my sergeant?’

  O’Reilly moved behind the bar, lifted up the bottle of brandy and examined the level. He stared at Hanley. ‘Purely medicinal was it? No one needs that amount of medicine. It’ll be comin’ out of your pay at the end of the week.’ He moved to the coffee machine.

  Harry Graham entered the pub blowing on his cupped hands. ‘Checked the registration with the station. Last registered to a guy named Adam Donaldson with an address in Argyle Street.’

  ‘Get a phone number for him,’ Wilson said, taking a cup of coffee offered by O’Reilly.

  Graham continued blowing on his hands. ‘Any chance of a coffee for me?’ he asked O’Reilly.

  O’Reilly nodded and went back to the machine. ‘I assume no one is paying.’

  Wilson took a ten-pound note from his pocket and put it on the bar. ‘Never let it be said.’

  O’Reilly pushed the note back. ‘On the house.’

  Graham took out his phone and sat at one of the tables across from the bar.

  Wilson and Browne moved away from the uniforms. ‘Any news on Forensics and the pathologist?’ Wilson asked.

  Browne sipped his coffee. ‘Forensics are on the way. The pathologist is doing an autopsy and will be along as soon as she’s free. What are we looking at here, Boss?’

  ‘Somebody wanted this guy dead. The head shot was the clincher. There are two exit wounds on his back, so it was two to the body and one to the head.’

  ‘A professional?’

  ‘Someone who knew what they were doing.’

  ‘Poor sod, what did he do to deserve being murdered?’

  ‘That’s something we’re going to have to find out. There’s a CCTV camera outside covering the car park. Before you leave, make sure that you take the disk with you.’

  Browne made a note in his day book.

  Graham joined his colleagues. ‘I got a number for Donaldson, but nobody is answering. Could be our boy outside.’

  A uniform came through the door and one of the three others at the bar reluctantly left the warmth to take his place. The new arrival came over to Wilson. ‘Forensic van just rolled up.’

  Wilson turned to Graham. ‘Harry, get on to the station and organise for uniforms to do a house-to-house.’

  Graham nodded. ‘There weren’t many folk about last night. It was a perfect night to kill someone.’

  ‘You never know,’ Wilson said. ‘Some old guy out walking his dog might have seen something. I’d best brave the cold and have a word with the new arrivals.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  The forensic team were already suited up and unpacking their gear when Wilson joined them at their van. He knew most of the FSNI personnel, but the man in charge was new to him. He turned as soon as Wilson approached. ‘Detective Superintendent Wilson I assume,’ he said.

  ‘You have me at a disadvantage.’

  ‘Michael Finlay, most people call me Mick. It’s frigging Baltic out here. What have we got?’

  Finlay’s accent wasn’t from the north of Ireland. It was somewhere south of the border, but Wilson was unsure of exactly where. Finlay was just under six feet tall with a neatly cut goatee beard. It was difficult to get a fix on his body size as he had so much padding under his suit.

  Wilson explained the situation. ‘The body hasn’t been moved. There’s a blue Volkswagen Polo in the car park that we assume belonged to the deceased. We’ve traced the owner listed with the DVLA and tried to call him, but there’s no answer. If there’s any identification on the body, I need it post-haste. There’s a coffee machine in the pub if you want to take a break from the cold.’

  Finlay turned to the two members of his team. ‘Let’s get the scene of crime photos done straight away.’ He turned to Wilson. ‘Pathologist?’

  ‘Busy with an autopsy. She’ll be here as soon as she can.’

  The three forensic officers picked up their gear and Wilson led them around the corner to the site of the body. Finlay looked at the Polo sitting alone in the car park. ‘I’ll organise transport for the car. No doubt you’ll want it thoroughly examined and it’s best to do that back at our facility.’

  Wilson nodded. He was glad the new guy was on top of things. The team were already putting down yellow numbered markers and taking photos. As another cold blast of wind hit him, he didn’t envy them their task. His phone rang and he saw it was his boss on the line. He pressed the green call button and started walking back towards the pub. ‘Ma’am,’ he said. ‘I’m outside, let me get in out of this bloody wind.’ He moved to a quiet corner of the pub and spent the next five minutes briefing the station commander, Chief Superintendent Yvonne Davis, on what they had found.

  ‘No political overtones?’ Davis said. She had almost taken up religion when the body of Noel Armstrong had been located on the southern side of the border. The Armstrong affair, as she now referred to the case, had looked for a long time like it would end her career in the PSNI.

  ‘Not on the face of it, but it’s early days and this is, after all, Northern Ireland. It looks like the killer knew what he was about. Harry’s put in a request for uniforms to help carry out the house-to-house, so I’d be grateful if you’d expedite that. The uniforms chosen won’t thank us because it’s freezing outside, but we have to get on with the investigation.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with Castlereagh. We missed you at the senior officers’ meeting this morning.’

  ‘I was looking forward to it myself. Pity this poor man’s murder got in the way.’

  Davis laughed. ‘You’re an absolute devil, Ian. Keep me informed.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Wilson walked across to Graham, who was just finishing his coffee, and told him that Davis would be expediting the uniforms for the house-to-house. ‘Sorry, Harry, normally I wouldn’t put a dog out in weather like this, but we need to canvas the area before people forget what they might have seen or heard. I want a report on the house-to-house by this evening. What about this Donaldson fellow?’

  ‘I’ve given that phone number a few more tries, but there’s still no answer and there’s no answer machine. This is a strange one, Boss. Out on a night like last night – must have been important.’

  Wilson didn’t like the word ‘important’, but Graham was right. There had to be a very good reason for someone to be out and about on the coldest night of the year. ‘Maybe Forensics will come up with something.’ He turned to Browne. ‘In the meantime, Donaldson is your baby. Go to his address and see why he isn’t answering the phone.’ Browne didn’t look pleased. ‘And while you’re at it, think about poor Harry and the uniforms freezing their balls off knocking on doors.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Professor Stephanie Reid arrived at O’Reilly’s pub just before midday. She had already carried out an autopsy on an apparently healthy athletics coach who had dropped dead. The cause of death turned out to be a minor heart malfunction that would have been easy to repair had it been detected. It just proved the old adage: when you time is up, your time is up.

  Wilson came up behind her as she was putting on her white plastic suit. ‘About bloody time,’ he said, help
ing her pull the suit up.

  ‘Some of us have real jobs.’ She picked up her bag. ‘Lead on, Macduff.’

  They walked around the pub. ‘Cause of death is pretty easy,’ Wilson said, ‘half his head is blown off. My guess is that he might have been already dead from the shots to his chest, and I certainly hope so. Time of death might be a little harder to determine because of the freeze.’

  The forensic team had turned the body over. Wilson stared at the face of the man. He looked familiar. He envied those people with a photographic memory for faces or names. He was in a people job and their faces and names registered only during the time he dealt with them before being consigned to some psychological dump. Despite this failing, he was sure that he had met this man before, and in his mind there was no association with the name Donaldson.

  Finlay joined them and introduced himself to Reid. ‘Nothing in the pockets other than these.’ He held up five small plastic bags and handed them to Wilson.

  Wilson checked the contents of the plastic bags: a packet of cigarettes, a box of matches, a ten-pound note and some loose change, a car key on a Volkswagen fob and another small key. ‘That’s it? No driver’s licence, credit card, bank card or letter from Social Services?’

  ‘No identification whatsoever,’ Finlay said.

  ‘Strange in this day and age,’ Wilson said, thinking about the different kinds of identification that could generally be found on the average person. ‘He wasn’t robbed, but perhaps the murderer searched him and removed his identification.’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ Finlay said. ‘But it doesn’t look like the body was moved after he was shot. We’ve processed the area around the corpse, so as soon as the professor has finished, he can be removed.’

  ‘No shell casings?’ Wilson asked.

  Finlay shook his head. ‘Looks like he took his brass with him.’

  It was another indication that the killer knew what he was doing.

  Finlay continued. ‘It looks like the victim was smoking when he was shot. We found the cigarette butt under the body. I can’t say for certain whether someone emptied his pockets. His clothes look undisturbed.’

  ‘What about the rounds he took in the chest?’ Wilson asked.

  Finlay shook his head. ‘They passed through so they’re out there somewhere. When we’re through here we’ll carry out a detailed search. We did recover this.’ He held up a plastic bag containing a mashed slug.

  Wilson took the bag and looked at the piece of deformed metal. ‘Looks like it could be a nine millimetre.’ He handed back the bag.

  Finlay dropped it into his satchel. ‘I agree.’

  Reid stood up. ‘I’ll arrange transport for the corpse. Time of death is going to be problematic. Right now, I would say anywhere between ten o’clock yesterday evening and two o’clock this morning.’ She saw the disappointment on Wilson’s face. It was a pretty wide window.

  Wilson looked across the car park where the Polo was being winched onto a low-loader. ‘When will you be through?’ he asked Finlay.

  ‘We’re breaking for lunch. We’ll process the rest of the site this afternoon and hopefully we’ll turn up the slugs from the chest shots.’

  ‘Can you get the scene of crime photos to me by this afternoon?’

  ‘We’ll send them to your computer over lunch.’

  Wilson slapped Finlay on the back. ‘Good man.’

  Reid packed her bag and started to walk away. Wilson joined her.

  ‘That Finlay is an impressive young guy,’ Wilson said.

  ‘He seems nice,’ Reid said.

  ‘You have anything planned for lunch?’ Wilson asked.

  There was no point in going back to the Royal so close to lunchtime. She looked at a sign on the corner of O’Reilly’s advertising all-day lunch specials. ‘I suppose a pub lunch is out of the question.’

  ‘It is at this pub, but I know another good bar on the way back into town, and I hope to God they’ve lit their turf fire at this time of the year. If we hurry, we might just be able to get a table close enough to thaw us out.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Detective Constable Peter Davidson dropped by the station early in the morning and found the squad room deserted except for Siobhan O’Neill, whom he was beginning to suspect was permanently attached to her chair. She was the squad ‘brains’, dipping in and out of her computer to supply the ‘real’ detectives with information. At least that’s what he assumed she did since he had had only limited contact with her. On the few occasions that he had availed of her skills, he had been impressed. Davidson was crawling towards retirement and was being treated by Wilson as a kind of free electron, running a small side investigation into the supposed suicide of politician Jackie Carlisle. The investigation had led him to form a liaison with Carlisle’s wife, the comely Irene. The investigation had also reminded him that Wilson’s intuition was still operational because it was becoming clear that Jackie Carlisle had been murdered. Davidson had also been feeling that his own powers were in serious decline, but the investigation had convinced him that there was life in the old dog yet, both in terms of his job and his ability to please a lady. The Carlisle investigation was off the books because it was delicate. So bloody delicate that it was dangerous to the health of whoever was working on it. And that was Peter Davidson. While Wilson had been sunning himself in California, Davidson had been treading water. Wilson was the only one who knew what he was up to, and he wasn’t going to put himself at risk without some kind of safety net. In the meantime, the widow Carlisle was getting restive. She had a lot of insurance money riding on the investigation proving that her husband was murdered. Wilson and Davidson were weaving a fragile web that could break and dump them both on their arses at any moment. ‘Nobody about?’ he asked as he passed O’Neill’s chair.

  ‘Body found outside a pub on the Antrim Road.’ O’Neill thought Davidson was a funny old bloke, but he’d more than thirty years’ experience on the job and had forgotten more than she would ever learn. Lately, he had been sprucing himself up. It was obvious to her that there was a lady involved. Everyone in the PSNI knew of Davidson’s chequered past, but O’Neill was in her twenties and she found the image of people as old as Davidson going at it repugnant.

  ‘Death never sleeps.’ Davidson was feeling profound. ‘Is it possible to pull up information on one of our colleagues in the Special Branch?’

  O’Neill looked up from her computer. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Would you like to try?’

  She thought about it for a moment. ‘What’s this in aid of?’

  ‘The investigation whose name is so sensitive that we may not speak it.’

  ‘The Carlisle investigation?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Give me the name.’

  ‘Sergeant Simon Jackson. Remember, absolute discretion is necessary. If there’s any chance at all that he can discover what we’re up to, stop immediately.’

  ‘Okay.’ She watched Davidson go to his desk and sit down. She’d been studying her colleagues attentively since Wilson had returned from his break. She was aware that her boss was observing her more closely than before. She wasn’t naïve and knew he must be considering whether one of his team had leaked the information about Noel Armstrong to the IRA. She was the obvious candidate. She had emphasised the matter of her security to Ronan Muldoon, but he had the brains of a gnat, and the IRA leaked like a colander. In retrospect, she should have thought of a more subtle way to make Armstrong pay for his crimes. If Wilson did manage to connect the dots, she might get away with perverting the course of justice, but it was more likely that she would be an accessory to murder. And that would mean a great deal of jail time. So, it was important that the dots not be joined up. Her mother had recently entered a care home and she had made sure that the monthly fee would be paid irrespective of what might happen to her. She didn’t like the fact that she had, in a certain manner, betrayed her boss and her colleagues. It left a nasty ta
ste in her mouth. But she wasn’t sorry that she had ensured that Armstrong wasn’t going to get away with murder. She wasn’t the first police officer in Northern Ireland to leak information and she certainly wouldn’t be the last. She was remaining as calm as she could. The Armstrong business would fade away eventually, but in the meantime she was going to keep her guard up.

  CHAPTER SIX

  O’Neill and Davidson were the only two members of the squad in the station when Wilson returned from lunch. Graham was probably freezing his arse off rapping on doors on the Antrim Road, while Browne was following up on the ownership of the Polo. Wilson wasn’t one for taking vacations. He often thought of the number of days he might be owed if he were to count up his overtime. He didn’t feel comfortable away from the office. While he’d been in the States, Davis had put one of her CIs in charge of the squad. The man she chose had no investigative experience and, in Wilson’s opinion, zero leadership ability. The upshot was that the squad had been just about keeping its head above water for the three weeks he’d been away. He looked through the glass surround of his office. A good example of what he meant was Peter Davidson. Nothing appeared to have happened on the Carlisle investigation since he’d left. He caught Davidson’s eye and motioned him to the office.

  ‘Boss,’ Davidson slipped easily into the visitor’s chair in front of Wilson’s desk.

  ‘Why is nothing happening on the Carlisle investigation?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘I’ve asked Siobhan to get me whatever she can on Jackson. You told me he was dangerous, so I’ve been waiting for your return to proceed. It’s not like the investigation has been approved, and I’ve been feeling the cold wind of exposure blowing up my arse.’

  Davidson was right. Wilson had started out intending to light a fire under him, but he had placed Peter in a difficult position. They had identified Sergeant Simon Jackson, a Special Branch officer, as a prime suspect in the murder of Jackie Carlisle. Wilson had experience with Jackson and was sure that he wouldn’t have acted without orders from someone higher up. Jackson was an operator not a director. There was a danger in investigating Jackson, but there would be extreme danger if the plot to kill Carlisle was orchestrated by someone further up the food chain. ‘Understood, but we have to push the investigation along. You’ve probably got the best contacts in the PSNI of any of us. Isn’t there someone you can tap?’