Crossing The Line

by Catriona King

  The immediate grin on Hamill’s face said it most certainly did.

  “That little shit? For sure.”

  Mary’s giggle at the expletive made the D.C.I. realise that he’d actually used one, so he shot her a sheepish grin and carried on.

  “Smyth’s been a member of practically every Loyalist gang since he was a lad in the eighties. It was like he was trying them all on to see which would fit.”

  “And which one did?”

  “UKUF. The UK Ulster Force. It used to be headed up by Tommy Hill but since his ‘retirement’...”Hamill used physical parentheses for sarcastic effect, “...that half-wit McCrae’s been running the show, or rather the show has been running all over him. Hill kept his men in order with the threat of a bullet in the brain-”

  Annette rolled her eyes. “Lovely.”

  “Not lovely, but effective all the same. At least it stopped them running amok unless Tommy ordered them to.”

  “And McCrae?”

  Hamill sighed. “Absolutely no control of his troops. They’re up to all sorts now, and it’s hard to work out what he’s ordered and what stunts they’re pulling behind his back. I never thought I’d say this, but bring back Tommy.”

  Mary signalled to ask a question.

  “Where was Derek Smyth in the UKUF hierarchy?”

  Hamill’s blue eyes opened wide. “Was? I take it Decker Smyth’s your murder Vic then? In which case, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer man.”

  Annette nodded. “Keep that to yourself, please. We don’t want word spreading yet.”

  “It probably already has, knowing prison gossip. But to answer your question, Smyth was one of McCrae’s lieutenants when he wasn’t in prison. Which he was, a lot. So that puts Smyth one rung below McCrae and to his side.”

  He answered her next question before she’d asked it.

  “He specialised in UKUF’s street level drug and gambling operations. Running lotteries and games and doing a bit of dealing; mostly weed, skunk, a bit of coke and maybe some ‘E’.”

  Ecstasy; it was a drug that hadn’t been mentioned in their discussions so far.

  Hamill hadn’t finished.

  “And he was a nasty little bastard with it. He got his nickname because he decked people regularly, especially addicts who owed him money. Smyth gave them the hiding of their lives and then slashed their forearms to show that they were marked men.”

  Ironic considering that Smyth’s own drug addiction had caused his end.

  The D.C.I. shook his head as if he could actually see the injuries.“But McCrae won’t be happy that Smyth’s bought it, I can tell you that. The two of them were kids together when they first started raking around the streets.”

  Annette scribbled down a few more words. “That’s very useful. Mind if I ask you some more?”

  A nod brought her next questions.

  “People smuggling, body-packing, and maybe even the trafficking of girls. Is anyone in the province actively involved in that?”

  Hamill seemed surprised by the query and it took him a moment to reply.

  “None of our home-grown lot, for sure. They’re too damn lazy to want the hassle of importing live cargo, although they’ll happily pimp out the girls here quickly enough. But some of the European factions are dark...” he shuddered, “I’ve heard rumours, but we’ve nothing concrete.”

  “Which factions in particular?”

  “Mostly the Albanians and Romanians, but that doesn’t mean the others don’t get in on it. We’re chasing a rumour of some Lithuanian involvement at the moment. Not on the people trafficking side, but maybe drugs.”

  A Baltic State, just like Max Harding had said.

  Annette pressed him for more detail. “Lithuanians on their own, or working with the Albanians and Romanians?”

  It brought an immediate shake of the head. “The Lithuanians wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole nor the other way around. The Northern and Eastern Europeans stick to their own. But I don’t think the Liths could manage to import without local help, and more to the point they’d need local agreement to smuggle anything in here or it would get nicked the minute it hit the ground. You could be looking at them working with a local gang.”

  “Any idea which one?”

  Hamill pulled a face. “That’s tricky. Lithuanians are mostly Catholic so you’d think their natural partners here would be a Republican group, but none of those are into people trafficking or forced prostitution, and they’re not mad about drugs either. Their game is counterfeit DVDs, protection, fuel fraud, burglaries and the like. So that leaves you with the Loyalist side.”

  Mary interjected in a surprised voice. “You really think that’s happening? Catholic Lithuanians are pairing with Protestant Loyalists?”

  She’d been raised Taoist, but having lived in Ireland all her life she knew all about its stupid religious fights.

  Hamill shrugged. “I think that greed makes strange bedfellows. Although if it is happening I’d say it’ll only be for one project. Both sides are too greedy to share their steady trade. But just going back to your people trafficking, I’m not convinced that is going on here. We have informers inside most of the gangs and I’ve heard nothing. And Emrys Lomax down in Vice hasn’t told me anything different. Where did you get the idea from anyway?”

  Annette answered him. “Just something that a customs officer said. It might have been speculation.”

  “Let me know if it turns out not to be.”

  As she nodded and turned back to her notebook, Mary jumped into the brief pause.

  “Have you heard anything about counterfeit medication, D.C.I. Hamill?”

  The use of his title made Geoff Hamill smile; he liked the young to be polite. So did Annette, but only if it was a sign of genuine respect and not just to get what you wanted.

  Either way it brought a nod from the D.C.I..

  “There’s plenty of that around. Pangea made a fair dent in it, but some meds are still getting in.”

  Annette took over again. “From where?”

  “Ukraine and China mostly I hear.”

  “Have you heard of any coming in through the ports here?”

  He shook his head. “By air and post mainly. But the ports would make sense too, especially for large quantities. Of course, some of it’s being produced here as well.”

  Mary’s eyes widened. “The gangs here are making fake meds and packaging them?”

  “Well, now, I don’t know if they’re bothering with the niceties. Making those blister packs is hard work, and like I said before, our lot are lazy. But some loose tabs are being produced here, I know that. And down south. Fake diazepams I’d heard.” He saw Annette’s mouth opening and held up a hand. “Don’t ask me if there are other types or who’s making them, because I don’t know. Drugs would be the people to ask.”

  It was something to pass up the line.

  Annette decided to turn her focus to prisons.

  “What can you tell us about prison gangs?”

  It brought a wry smile to the D.C.I.’s pale face.

  “Ah, well now, prison’s a world within a world and it has its own rules and rituals.”

  “You don’t mean the ones in the governor’s manual.”

  She got a definite smirk this time.

  “No indeed.” Hamill sat forward again. “OK, let’s look at prisons in the USA. The authorities segregate the vulnerable prisoners from others, including those like nonces who might be killed if they were put out in the general population. But inside Gen Pop people also segregate themselves. Prisoners roam in packs, sometimes based on their nationality: Eastern European, Chinese and so on. Sometimes their offences: murderers mixing with other murderers, thieves with other thieves. And then you get the ones that bring their ideologies in with them and remain within that group.”

  “Like Loyalists and Republicans.”

  “And the far-right and fascist groupings, and others. What I’m saying is that you get all sorts of tribal
allegiances in prisons, regardless of what country it’s in.”

  Annette was only interested in the local scene. “What are our groupings?”

  The reply came without hesitation.

  “Loyalists, Republicans, Europeans and far-right. There’s overlap between the first and the last of those in particular, and within the European group there are some who don’t mix, like I said earlier.”

  He sat back.

  “Then again drugs cut across all groups, so if your question about counterfeit meds is linked with prison, then I’d say that as far as drug-dealing goes inside it’s likely to be every man for himself. Things get very blurred in there. A man might go in brandishing the label of Loyalist or Republican but when he’s jonesing for a fix every flag starts to look the same.”

  It echoed Karl Rimmin’s words about blurred lines.

  “OK. One last question and then we’ll leave you in peace, I promise.”

  Hamill chuckled. “Just when I was starting to enjoy myself. OK, shoot.”

  “Mahon Prison specifically. What do you know about the place?”

  A slight flash of the eyebrow on “Mahon” said that Hamill definitely knew something. Whether he was going to tell them about it was a different thing.

  His response was slower than before.

  “Mahon... down in Armagh... a high security men’s prison...”

  It was the government brochure on the place and not what Annette wanted to know, so she pressed her point.

  “It’s all of that, but on the gang side specifically-”

  She was cut off by a shake of the head and the D.C.I. rising briskly to his feet.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s just as I told you. There are Loyalists, Republicans, Europeans and far-right factions, and drugs remove all barriers. There’s nothing different about Mahon.”

  Hamill’s hand shot out to shake hers, marking a definite end to their chat.

  “Thank you for coming and I hope that’s been of some use to you, Annette.” He glanced at Mary. “Nice to meet you, Constable Li.”

  Then the door was opened and they were harried out into the corridor, without even an ambiguous, “Catch you later” to keep them warm.

  Mary’s indignation at the hasty exit wasn’t soothed by the sight of Annette smirking as they walked back towards the stairs and she muttered an irritated, “Why are you smiling?” as they began their ascent to the tenth floor.

  Annette’s reply was smug. “I’m smiling because if I’m right we’ve just discovered there’s a Gang Crime operation happening inside Mahon.”

  It was another thing to tell the boss when she called.

  ****

  The Labs. 9.30 a.m.

  Des Marsham wasn’t dancing at his workbench today, he was complaining. It wasn’t a soft, “Tsk” or a gently irritated, “Mmm...” but a series of loud tuts followed by some, “Ach”s with the odd, “Oh, for God’s sake!” thrown in.

  It was this last utterance that caught the attention of Grace, at her desk in the open-plan office outside, the mention of the Lord’s name never appropriate in her opinion unless uttered in worship. Although she had learned to make some allowances since she’d moved to Ireland, finding it a country where religion, and Christianity in particular, both positively, and negatively in its use as a weapon of segregation, permeated almost everything that people did; God even being invoked to complain when a cup of tea was too weak. That was why the CSI was drawn to her boss’ office and also why she wasn’t planning on telling him off for blasphemy, an offence that, in her opinion, was never charged often enough.

  The CSI knocked gently on the door and entered to see the Head of Forensics standing with his back to her, so she took the opportunity of not being seen to take a quick peek at the test-tube rack beside him before giving a loud cough to announce herself and asking, “Can I help you with anything, Doctor Marsham?”

  It stopped Des in his muttering tracks, his thoughts ranging from ‘Who just spoke?’ through, ‘Why is Grace in my office?’ to, ‘I wonder if she could help, because that would be really good’.

  When he turned he said something else entirely.

  “Can I help you, Grace?”

  The CSI instantly recognised pride and defensiveness rearing their unattractive heads, and finding a way past them became her next task.

  “Well, yes. I’d like you to take a look at the blood work from the blade if you would. I’m not sure of the group.”

  The puffing out of Des’ chest was significant, as he rushed to give a woman who definitely didn’t need it the benefit of his advice, Grace having already ID-ed the blood grouping twenty minutes before. After a few minutes hunched over her desk outside he pronounced that the owner of the blood did indeed have a rare AB Rhesus Negative blood-group, something that would help narrow the potential victims at Mahon down to a very few. As hoped for, in the spirit of bonhomie that ensued he felt suddenly able to confide that he would like Grace to reciprocate the favour and take a look at what he’d been working on, explaining as they returned to his test-tubes that the liquid he’d found in the centre of Derek Smyth’s tablets had proved a challenge to ID but he thought that he might be on to something now.

  Ten minutes and one new test later, suggested by his CSI, Des was no longer tutting or muttering but grudgingly admiring the evil mastermind who’d thought of inserting Strychnine into the centre of the little blue tab. It was accompanied by a feeling of goodwill towards the woman by his side that he decided to demonstrate using an historical point.

  “I was going to send you to Mahon Prison on Sunday, but I decided not to.”

  I decided? Craig might have had something to say about the pronoun if he’d been there.

  He added, smugly but unnecessarily .

  “You being a woman and all that.”

  Des wasn’t sure what response he’d expected: gratitude, admiration, a fluttering of eyelashes perhaps, subtitled “Oh, sir, you worried about little me”, but it definitely wasn’t the blunt, “I wouldn’t have gone anyway. It was my day off and I was doing my thing” that came snapping back.

  His next words emerged in a squeak of surprise both that his prim sidekick had ‘a thing’ of any description, the words sounding almost rock and roll, and indignation at her lack of appreciation of his fictitious efforts to protect her delicate ears from the shouts of several hundred caged men.

  “Your thing? What does that mean?”

  His answer was a mysterious smile and Grace strolling back to her desk.

  ****

  The C.C.U. Murder Squad. 10 a.m.

  While Des was having a challenging morning Davy was quite enjoying his, even though it had involved a lot of work. He’d decided overnight to take an organised approach to Derek Smyth’s murder instead of the haphazard way of working that always marked the beginning of a case, when Craig’s machinegun rattling out of urgent ‘need to knows’ inevitably resulted in them giving him kneejerk analysis.

  The analysis was correct of course but that wasn’t the point, it was messy, and inevitably followed after the first real briefing, such as they’d had the evening before, by a more systematic list of requests from the detective that required far less messy approaches when they’d already got into working in a kneejerk, messy way.

  It happened on every case, it was inefficient, and he’d had enough of it. But getting Craig to change his approach to a more orderly one when it was the output of an intuitive, investigative mind and therefore, experience had taught them all, disinclined to work in straight lines, was unlikely.

  Davy’s years with the detective had shown him that he often worked like a submarine on silent running, toiling away secretively and quietly and only surfacing at random moments to issue instructions before his mental processes submerged again. It was an approach that had given the squad a murder clear-up rate higher than anywhere else in the UK or Ireland, so Craig was obviously doing something right and he couldn’t ask him to alter his way of working; the answer then had
to be that they would have to alter theirs to a more structured approach.

  That was Davy’s thinking anyway but when he’d outlined it to his junior, Ash had been outwardly encouraging but given an inward smirk that said, “We’ll see”. He’d known Davy since their first year at Queen’s and he’d suffered these occasional fits of efficiency even then, drafting study timetables and hanging them on his wall and computer terminal and then after a day or two consigning them to the bin. The truth was that Davy was every bit as chaotic in his thinking as Craig, but if it pleased him to believe differently then he was happy to go along.

  To that end Ash folded his arms and waited for his boss’ words of wisdom. They came in the form of a printed list.

  “This is your copy and it’s what I’d like us to w...work to from now on.”

  The ear-ringed warrior ran his eyes down the page: ‘One, get blood-group from blade; Two, check for matches at Mahon and give the names to the chief; Three, check SIM URLs again; Four, Drone drop; check guard who intercepted drone and prisoners waiting for the drop’, and on and on it went.

  Ash read the page with feigned interest and then set it aside with a matter of fact, “We’re already doing all of that.”

  Davy huffed at him. “I know that. Of course I know that. I’m just trying to introduce some order. A common list that we’re both working to, so that w...we can tick off tasks when they’re complete and the other one always knows where we are.”

  Ash scanned the small area they were seated in. “As opposed to just shouting across the...” he calculated exaggeratedly for a moment, “...giant three foot gap between our desks! Ooh... how could we ever manage to hear each other and keep up-to-date when we work so far apart?”

  The sarcasm brought a blush to Davy’s cheeks but he stood his ground with a frown, partly because he was the boss and it was what he imagined boss-like behaviour to be, and partly because inside he really wanted to laugh because he knew his friend was right and only looking stern could prevent him crumbling.

  “No arguments! We’re doing it! The list’s on your computer as well.”