Blood Will Be Born

by Donnelly, Gary

  Once in her car, she drove on autopilot and found herself back at SecuriTel. She rolled her window half way down, sucked in the fresh sea air coming in off Belfast Lough, then soaked tissues with a bottle of water and applied the cool wad to the hot, nasty welt on her forehead. Aoife took stock. Charlie’s betrayal, if true, was one thing, but the CCTV was something else; way beyond anything Charlie could have arranged, even if he had wanted to. It was high quality, industry standard, and the sort of technology she had heard of MI5 and Special Branch using in Northern Ireland. After today she would not be surprised if Moore was in cahoots with both. She squinted, as the sun was reflected from the side of the glass building. SecuriTel’s logo loomed above her. The camera was still watching from its vantage point above.

  That fat pig Danny Burgoyne, his accent was not Donegal, or Leitrim.

  It was Derry.

  Same place as the hotel where she and Charlie had been stitched up.

  I rarely get to see people in the flesh.

  Burgoyne had seen her before, on the CCTV recording he had probably helped set up. Not a coincidence that he was in the office on Saturday. Burgoyne was Moore’s man, which meant Moore had a copy of the recording and he was hunting the killer. Information she now needed to shield from her team, until she found a way to deal with Moore’s blackmail; adding lie upon lie, deeper and deeper by the minute. And next, she must obey her master’s voice, blame republicans for the murder. Doing so would add fuel to a fire that could burn out of control. To refuse meant losing her job, her reputation, Ava. What a mess, what a God awful dangerous mess.

  Chapter 20.

  A tea towel filled with ice, cubes pointed and unforgiving against the swelling on Sheen’s head. It hurt like hell, but Sheen pressed it harder. The barman worked his way quickly across the length of the pub floor with a mop, bucket in tow, heading in the direction of the front door where black top’s blood led. Sheen could see a path of bright wetness in his wake. He had given Sheen the ice pack without comment, before fetching the mop.

  The old boy had resumed his place on the stool at the end of the bar and Sheen took one next to him.

  ‘Give us your wallet, please,’ said the old boy. Sheen dropped the fat leather sandwich on the bar between them. The old boy flipped it open and thumbed out two twenties. He closed the wallet with a flip and held the money up between two pork sausage fingers. The barman approached.

  ‘For your trouble Colm,’ he said. Colm the barman nodded once and took the money.

  ‘That’s them barred now, sorry Billy,’ he said.

  ‘Their own fault, as per usual,’ replied Billy. ‘Though having DCI Banks here dander in and wave a wallet full of money around didn’t exactly help,’ he said to Sheen. ‘Mine’s is another pint by the way, and a large Bushmills to chase it,’ he said.

  ‘And a pint of water for me,’ said Sheen. Colm set to work.

  ‘I want to thank you helping me out there,’ said Sheen.

  ‘So say it,’ said Billy.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sheen.

  ‘Welcome, Seamus,’ said Billy. Sheen gritted his teeth, heard them squeak and tasted the residue of his own bile.

  ‘As I said when we met earlier, that’s not my name. If I’m buying you a drink, maybe we can start again. My name is-’

  ‘I know who you are, Owen Sheen. I recognised you on the flight today, and when you blundered in here. Name’s Murphy, Billy Murphy.’ Billy paused, appraised him.

  ‘You have the look of your Da, you always did,’ he said.

  ‘You mean, we have met, before?’ said Sheen

  ‘I remember you, if that is what you mean.’

  ‘And that’s why you helped me just now, with the twins?’ said Sheen. The ice had started to melt and a cold finger of water trickled from his scalp down the back of his collar. He repositioned the pack with a wince, waited for a reply.

  ‘Your Da was a good man. He never deserved what happened,’ said Billy. Colm the barman set down their drinks and Sheen passed him a ten pound note. Colm thanked him, went to the till and deposited it. No change.

  ‘Is your Da still living?’ said Billy. He drained a gulp from his fresh pint, and chased it with a sip of Bushmills; one drink opaque black, the other dark varnish fire in a glass.

  ‘Dad’s dead, this year,’ said Sheen.

  ‘Sorry to hear it,’ said Billy, rocking his head forward and to the side once, half a nod, half a shake.

  ‘So does everyone your age round here know how to handle themselves like you?’ said Sheen, taking a sip of his ice filled pint of water, the liquid running cold fire down his raw throat.

  ‘My age you say?’ said Billy. ‘In my day, I did some moonlighting for a local loan shark at the docks. Lots of bad debts on the water front.’

  ‘You collected the money?’ said Sheen.

  ‘There was rarely money to collect, son, this was Sailortown. I said I did some moonlighting, I settled the debts whether money could be repaid or not,’ he said, and cracked his knuckles; deep bony breaks.

  ‘Then you’ll understand why I am back, why I was willing to take a risk with the twins,’ said Sheen. Billy grunted and took another pull on his drink.

  ‘I heard you spin a tissue of nonsense to them, same as you did on the plane to my wife this morning. I wonder if you have any truth in you at all young Sheen.’

  ‘I want to settle an old score, clear a debt, and you know what I am talking about,’ said Sheen, grabbing hold of Billy’s arm as he was about to raise the pint to his mouth again. Rough textured tweed, hard muscle beneath. Sheen let go. Billy Murphy turned in his stool.

  ‘You mean the car bomb, the one that killed your brother, that nearly killed you?’ he said. Sheen recalled his dream, or, perhaps, his newest memory; the sound of his feet running, the slam of a car door.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘A bit of honesty at last then,’ said Billy. He paused, gulped his pint and put it down, half empty now. ‘You’re not the only one who lost that day. My nephew was playing football in the street with your brother,’ he said. Sheen took a second to make sense of what he was saying. He had been the only child that survived, meaning Billy’s nephew was blown to pieces, just like Kevin. He’d had no clue. Yet again, his barren memory offered him only frustration and humiliation.

  ‘I want the bastards who did it, I don’t care if they are in prison or in Government, I want them,’ said Sheen. He had slammed the ice pack down with a muffled rattle on the bar. Half melted cubes dispersed across the dark wood.

  ‘No doubt you do. It surprises me it took you this long to come looking, being a peeler and all. I might have balanced that book a long time since,’ said Billy.

  ‘But you didn’t, did you?’ said Sheen. Billy eyed him.

  ‘I had my own family to consider, and believe me I have settled my share of scores in this town over the years. Plus in Belfast, a man does well to understand his own limits. Discretion can be the better part of valour,’ said Billy. Billy knew something, his copper’s sense told him so, and Sheen was close to hearing it.

  ‘Give me a name, Billy,’ he said.

  Instead, Billy said, ‘There was a lot of rumours at the time of that bomb, conspiracy bollocks. Some said it was loyalists with the help of the Brits who planted that device. Others blamed some Marxist splinter group like the INLA, they had no scruples, and they had the form for it. No class you might say,’ said Billy with a dry chuckle.

  ‘Some said it was a mistake, that the IRA had the car bomb primed and ready for a target in the city centre or for a British foot patrol and it was abandoned or went off early,’ said Billy.

  ‘I know all this already. I want the truth,’ said Sheen.

  ‘The truth is nobody knows, and the truth is just the truth, Owen Sheen. That bomb was never claimed, no-one done time for it. Na, what you want is a name,’ he said. Sheen listened; this was it, the moment he had waited for.

  ‘Ask yourself who benefited from that bomb? It
was one of the last plays in the Troubles. Before it there were tit for tat sectarian killings, the whole place was on the edge of civil war. That bomb was a wake-up call, and it sickened people, turned the bulk against violence. Gave loyalists pause for thought about killing any more innocent Catholics. Remember Protestants died too; one woman 9 months pregnant with twins. You could say it set the stage for peace,’ said Billy.

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Sheen.

  ‘The truth doesn’t always make sense, you know. The Brits got their message not long after when the boys blew up Canary Wharf; hit them where it really did hurt them, in their pocket. After that the Peace Process got properly moving, everyone willing to talk the same language, round the same table. But it was always the IRA who was one step ahead, leading the loyalists and the British Government by the nose,’ said Billy. He laughed again, the same dry, mirthless chuckle he had used earlier.

  ‘From bomber jackets and DM boots to limousines and Armani suits, that about sums up some people on that side. Men like Jim Dempsey, for example,’ he said.

  Sheen knew who he meant. Dempsey; he was a middle ranking republican, an administrator in the new Northern Ireland Assembly, but big behind the scenes, a political operator who got things done. A ruthless man, some had named him in connection with a fire bombing for a hotel in the 1970s. Dempsey denied ever being in the IRA, but he never sued the journalist who wrote the piece.

  ‘Dempsey planted the bomb?’ asked Sheen.

  ‘Never said that,’ said Billy, slowly shaking his head, and then raised his Bushmills and took a knock, a proper one this time, not just a sip. ‘Dempsey benefited,’ he continued, cheeks flushing a deep scarlet with the drink.

  ‘But a man like him was too fly to be involved directly. By the early 1990s he was a poster boy for the political side of things, and earning more air miles than the Pope. He got someone to do the dirty work, same story the world over,’ he said. Billy’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, though their end of the bar was empty.

  ‘Word about town was that it was one of his crew that was responsible.’ Sheen shook his head, not understanding Billy’s meaning.

  ‘One of the men that Dempsey commanded in St James, they operated in a team of three. These guys were loyal to Dempsey as much as to the IRA, and they were dangerous boys.’ Sheen nodded, this was better.

  ‘Who are they? Where can I start looking?’ he said.

  ‘Start looking in Milltown, you’ll find two of them stacked on top of one another. Kennedy and Mooney, were both dead and buried by the time your brother was murdered,’ he said, still whispering, holding his whiskey glass in one fist. Most of it had been drained.

  ‘That’s two, you said there were three,’ said Sheen. His pulse was racing now.

  ‘The last of them is a guy called Fryer, John Fryer. He was alive when Sailortown happened, and active. He was put away shortly after, something unrelated. Got out on early release under the Good Friday Agreement, with the rest of them,’ he said. His voice had dropped even lower, as though by uttering his name this Fryer might appear from the fire exit behind them. Sheen’s heart quickened further, he clenched his fists.

  ‘Please, tell me he’s still in the country, I have to find him,’ said Sheen.

  ‘Keep your bloody voice down,’ said Billy, his big eyes scanning the room. ‘You’ll have no problem finding Fryer, I know where he is,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me. If I look in his eyes, I will know if it was him,’ said Sheen.

  ‘Lot of good it might do you. Fryer went loop the loop, lots of these guys did. He is in Belfast Heights, the psychiatric hospital. The guy was cutting himself up after he was released; he ended up killing his pet dog, then decorating his apartment with it,’ said Billy.

  Sheen pushed his stool back and stood up. He opened his wallet, no notes left.

  ‘Thanks Billy, when I’m next in, I’ll get you another pint,’ he said. Billy ignored the small talk.

  ‘This Fryer, he is a bogeyman, Sheen. And Dempsey is very powerful. After what happened today, you don’t need me to tell you to be careful,’ he said. Sheen nodded, and then headed for the door, reached for his mobile, found it intact. Colm the barman looked up from his paper, said, ‘See ya,’ as Sheen passed, limping a little, his right side dragging with each painful step. Sheen returned the pleasantry, a local now after all, then pulled the door open and checked outside to see if Gerard was still waiting for him.

  The car was gone, so he hit Gerard’s number. Sheen listened to the ring tone, rested his hand on the cold metal surface of the table. No answer, Sheen killed the call, breathed in the waterfront air, salty, clean but also faintly rotten. At last he had a name; John Fryer, and a place where he could find him; Belfast Heights. He pressed Gerard’s number again, this time got a reply, told him to come. Sheen shuffled away from Muldoon’s for a second time that day; a rough beast, its time come round at last, slouching through Belfast to be born.

  Chapter 21.

  As Sheen and Aoife tucked into their Ulster Fry in T.K One, Christopher had sat behind the wheel of the black taxi at a red light, no more than a mile away. He was waiting to take the left turn into the Kennedy Centre shopping mall at the top of the Falls Road, John Fryer’s shopping list in his pocket. The lunchtime traffic was murder.

  Christopher could have gone somewhere more local near Bangor, but when he got behind the wheel of the black taxi, and started the rattling old engine, this is where it had taken him; back home to the Falls Road. Amongst the many other things that John told him at the Heights, he’d explained where to find this old dinosaur; in a locked up garage in Poleglass, way out west. The garage door was no problem, and the key, as promised, was in a plastic bag under one of the front wheel rims. John Fryer had driven this taxi when he was first released from prison after the Good Friday Agreement; an old street soldier, suddenly wearing dead man’s shoes, shipping punters from the west into the city, back again, cash in hand.

  He had not lasted long before things took a turn for the worse. First the drinking, then the cutting and finally the incident with his dog, when he had bled it dry and painted himself into a safe corner in his council flat until he was eventually found by Jim Dempsey. After that he had been sent to the Heights, locked away and forgotten, until Christopher had discovered him.

  It felt like poetic justice that the black hack should become the vehicle for his return to action. Against all the odds, its engine had started; coughing and spilling blue smoke, but back from the dead all the same. The traffic light ahead of him blinked amber and turned green, but after creeping a few feet forward he stopped again with a high pitched screech, as a family walked across the road regardless, their dog off the lead. Typical westies.

  Christopher’s own canine history, just like John Fryer, was a less than happy one. Max, the next door neighbour’s evil Jack Russel had terrorised Christopher when he was a boy. The ugly bastard yapped day and night, but when Christopher’s ball went over the hedge, he had to run the gauntlet, chased by the evil wee shite, its teeth bared, coming at him like a white cannonball. It never got him, but it had scared him, and Christopher had read enough psychology to know that a fear can generalise; first a fear of one dog, then a fear of all dogs. Max had never sunk his teeth in, but he had left his mark.

  Christopher smiled. Max had turned up dead, when Christopher was eleven, bled out all over their back garden, the way a dog will if it eats rat poison in minced meat. Someone had fed it to him after saving up weeks of pocket money to buy. The neighbours had made a point of knocking his door, telling his parents what had happened, as though anyone gave a damn. Daddy had closed the front door slowly, he’d been wearing his uniform shirt, turned to Christopher who was watching from the living room door and struck him once, the first and only time. Which was awful, but his silence was even worse.

  A couple of years later another tragedy had hit the finger pointing, door knocking neighbours. The bitch had left their toddler unsupervised in the back gar
den with a shallow paddling pool during the hot summer of ‘03 (she’d gone indoors for less than ninety seconds, it was tight), but when she returned the replacement dog who had made almost as much noise as Max was face down under water and not moving. Of course, this time the police came. Daddy had brought him out front, stood with his hand on Christopher’s shoulders while he exchanged banalities in a hushed and reverential voice with his fellow officers. But when they departed, so too did Daddy’s hand from Christopher’s shoulders, never to return. He did not strike him. He did not even look at him. There was only silence that went on, and on. His mother had left the party by that point; she sat through the commotion and stillness alike in front of the telly, full blast, curtains closed.

  Christopher blinked the thought of her away, looked to his left. Milltown Cemetery, grave stones and Celtic crosses peeping over a grey stone wall. It was empty and looked forgotten against the afternoon bustle of the road. But that was going to change. When their plan, starting with Jim Dempsey took shape, Milltown was going to get a whole lot busier and soon.

  Someone leaned on a horn behind him. Christopher shot a glance in his rear view, a line of cars, more honks, clear and empty road ahead.

  The lights had changed, he was holding up traffic.

  Christopher raised a palm and took the taxi left, followed the road down, into the submerged car park under the shopping complex, oil, still air and the fumes from his taxi. He found a secluded bay by the wall, well away from the moving stair case that ascended towards the mall, and parked. He popped the glove compartment and took out Daddy’s .38 Ruger, slipped it into the inside pocket of his coat, got out and walked towards the entrance.

  The wide aisles of the mall were crowded. Christopher listened, heard the same snippets of conversations played over and over, talk of the blackout. Their fridges were off, meat was spoiling. Boilers were dead and no hot water. The NIE’s worse than useless, not even answering the phone. Because this is west Belfast, if it were anywhere else, they would have it sorted. It’s only us, second class citizens. Christopher savoured the worry and panic in the voices, but better still, he could hear it; the old anger was back. And there would be more, much more.