Dirty Old Tricks E-Book

Pat Gray

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 344

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

A chilling noir novel set in the Belfast of The Troubles in which Pat Gray introduces us to the flawed but dogged and honourable policeman McCann. It is a welcome return to fiction after an eighteen year silence by one of Ulster's finest novelists. Eight years in C Division was a long stretch for any man to be in one of the worst posts. That would break the toughest fellow. That would make you wonder if McCann was really the man for the job. Inspector McCann is called to investigate the brutal murder of a teenage girl, at first assuming it is a sex crime or sectarian tit-for-tat killing. But another girl is killed and then his prime suspect castrated and murdered. He finds himself trapped in vicious old rivalries, unsupported and alone. Are the murders connected to 'Dirty Tricks' by the combatants in Ireland's war, or has McCann lost the plot, as his boss suggests?

Leseprobe

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Blackstaff Press for their permission to use an extract from ‘The Coasters’ by John Hewitt, from TheSelectedPoemsofJohnHewitt, ed. Michael Longley and Frank Ormsby (Blackstaff Press, 2007) on behalf of the estate of John Hewitt.

An extract from ‘The Ballad of Gerry Kelly: Newsagent’ by James Simmons, from Poems1956-1986 (1986) is reproduced by kind permission of the estate of James Simmons and the Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland.

Cover photograph by Frankie Quinn www.frankiequinn.com

I would also like to thank all of those who have read and commented on the manuscript of the book and helped so much in seeing it completed: my wife Jane Klauber, Juri Gabriel, Mark Caulfield, Eric Lane at Dedalus, and all the members of the ex-Morley writers group. Particular thanks to my brother John Gray, who helped point out where my failing memory had things wrong. Though a work of fiction, any errors in the book are mine alone.

The cloud of infection hangs over the city,A quick change of wind and itMight spill over the leafy suburbs.

John Hewitt, TheCoasters

Down the hill of lies and horrorBelfast city slipped.

James Simmons, TheBalladofGerryKelly:Newsagent

Chapter One

Belfast, 1975

McCann lay awake in the bedroom. Occasionally a car would pass on the road outside. Its headlights would send the shadowy branches of trees careering starkly across the ceiling, then briefly illuminating the open cupboard doors and his cast-off uniform on the floor beside the ashtray, like the chalked line around a dead man. Then everything descended again into darkness. The noise of the car tyres swished away on the wet road outside and McCann’s breathing eased. The slight arching of tension in his spine relaxed as he realised that the car was not slowing and that no one was coming to call for him.

He shook one leg out sideways, feeling the cool, wide space in the bed beside him. He hoped that somehow sleep would creep upon him if he were to change his position, but knew that whatever he did, the sense of numbness and disbelief would still be there. At first the cool, unrumpled sheets beside him had been a novelty, almost exciting in their potential. He turned on his back and placed his hands under his head, trying to imagine the room back to how it had been, with her things on the back of the chair, her photo on the bedside table, her boots carelessly discarded and her mysterious sleeping breath beside him. That had been so fine when, on nights like these, he had not been able to sleep and had put his face in the back of her neck and smelt the scent in her hair.

He hadn’t closed the curtains. He wouldn’t close them now. They could come for him. He wouldn’t mind. They would come and take him out but he wouldn’t do it for them. That was not McCann’s way. Better to lie like this and suffer the night. He lit a cigarette and drew on it in the dark, the glow a little comforting, the smoke lifting him up. He looked at his watch and saw it was four fifteen. He’d make a cup of tea and sit in the kitchen watching the first faint light come up. It would be cold. He could hear the rain, drip-dripping from the gutters. It’d keep them off him, a wet night. He smiled as he flipped the kettle on. Crazy that the rain could keep them off the murdering, how inconsequential it made him.

‘Better leave off killing that peeler because it’s so fucking wet. We’ll do him another night, shall we?’ He winced at the sudden surge of hatred of them, like an outbreak of acid juices in his stomach. Did having a woman with him make him safer, he wondered? They weren’t squeamish, but it didn’t look so good to blow away a man’s wife, still less a child. Ah well, to hell with that, he thought. He peered out into the garden, the light silhouetting him. Let them come for him, he didn’t care if they did.

‘Come on then,’ he breathed, ‘You’ll think you’re hurting us, but me, you’ll be setting me free.’

And then by the old inevitable logic his gloom began to lift and the night to merge into dawn and his shoulders sagged and he lay forward on the formica tabletop in the kitchen and he slept for half an hour or so with strange, jumbled dreams. He awoke with his mouth dry and dribble down the front of his pyjamas but rested, as if a curse had been lifted from him. He went back to bed and turned the radio on low, dozing through the news of shootings and events in God knows where, till he heard the sound of a police Land Rover on the gravel and the toot of the horn and leapt up to get the uniform on, to clean his teeth and shave and start the day.

He shouted down the hall, inarticulately, pulled on the trousers, the woollen vest, the pale green shirt, the braces, then into the bathroom. At the mirror his own face looked out at him round-eyed, frowning at the bags doubling under his eyes, the jowls around the mouth as he reached for his soap and razor.

‘A minute. Just a minute.’ He could hear the engine of the Land Rover running outside on the drive and the chatter of the police radio. A quick slap of cold water then the jacket, socks and shoes and he was out of the door. A constable was waiting on the step, with his submachine gun idly slung round up his back. McCann knew he should have told him off on account of it, but had never liked the men having weapons anyway so he just said: ‘What’s up? Can you not let a fellow sleep in peace?’

‘We were told to pick you up, sir.’

‘Aye well you’ve got me now,’ said McCann and shrugged his collar up against the soft rain that was drifting across the street, smelling for a moment the sea off the lough and the green fields. Then he was up and into the fug of the front seat. The heater was blowing and the wipers were going back and forth. The driver was smoking with the window half open to take away the smoke. McCann nodded to the driver and he slammed the motor into gear and swung the armoured vehicle round in a handbrake turn across the gravel and out through the gates accelerating for a moment onto the wrong side of the road, the vehicle rolling. McCann felt sick. He always felt sick, with or without breakfast. He yawned and looked out at the traffic bunched back off the motorway in the rain.

The driver started to swear, hating being caught in traffic, being a stationary target.

‘What’s the hurry anyway pal?’ said McCann. ‘How’d Linfield do?’ he asked.

‘Three-one.’

‘Three-one! That’s great.’

‘Aye, McKinley came on late and gave them a good belting.’

‘So, where are we going?’

‘I’m afraid it’s up the mountain again, Inspector.’ There was a pause in the conversation then as the Land Rover stopped and started, edging forward up the line of cars in the rain. The radio burbled police small talk in the lull of the day when the bad men slept and the honest folk tried to begin their daily business.

Then they were on the Shore Road, neat rows of modern houses with their darkened windows giving way to repair yards and low-rise offices. At the bottom of Duncairn Gardens two army Saracen armoured cars had pulled over under a mural of a hooded man looking down from a gable end with his gun, declaring ‘UVF1 for God and Ulster.’ They passed along York Street, then right before they reached the security barriers, passing the cathedral on the left and away up onto the ring road, accelerating fast through the lights outside the Divis Flats. McCann could see the sun turning the clouds red and ochre above the hills, as if suffused with blood, the moorland of the Black Mountain turning sludge green as colour began to fill the day.

When they pulled off the motorway and began to climb up out of Belfast towards the mountain, he heard the constable at the rear doors checking the magazine on his gun.

‘Here we go,’ said the driver, dropping a gear for the climb, racing the engine to keep the speed up along the exposed estate road. Halfway up there was another Saracen blocking the way and a couple of squaddies sheltering against it, turning the traffic back. The driver pulled up alongside and wound the window down. The officer in charge of the roadblock was very young and nervously self-confident with it.

‘Good morning Inspector! You’ll find them two hundred yards up on the left,’ he said. ‘It’s well covered. Forensics up there already. I’d keep your head down though. Paddy’s got a good line of fire on the right.’ McCann smiled and wound the window back up in the man’s face.

‘Paddy’s got a good line of fire,’ he imitated the officer’s English accent and the driver smiled wanly too as the Land Rover eased through the roadblock onto the empty wet road, on one side the mountain, then on the right away across some scrubby fields the line of the city, the drab grey estate, the walls daubed with ‘IRA’, the occasional green white and gold flag fluttering. Further up the road another armoured patrol had stopped the cars coming the other way. A thin rain was still falling, making the road black and slick.

McCann climbed down from the Land Rover. In the ditch below on the left he could see the white suits of the forensic team working. He slid down the embankment through the brambles, relieved to be away from the exposed roadway. The body was twisted, as if she had been thrown from a passing car and had tumbled lifeless, her limbs knotting as she fell, face down into the bottom of the ditch, discarded amongst the other litter. The faces of the men were pinched and white and silence hung there, punctuated only by their breathing as they searched in the long grass.

McCann stumbled up to where the body lay. They were still taking photographs, the flash going off irregularly, cutting the gloom for a moment, freezing the image of the girl.

‘Oh God,’ said McCann involuntarily. ‘How old is she?’

It was not what you expected at a time like this. Who’d do something like that to someone that age? That was too much. It was a shock. He’d expected some tattooed lout with his hands tied behind his back, a beating gone wrong maybe, but not a teenage girl in school uniform.

‘This is wrong,’ he said suddenly. ‘This is quite wrong.’

The forensic officer straightened up with a small groan of pain.

‘My back,’ he said. ‘My back’s killing me. You’d think they’d show a bit of consideration to a fellow my age.’

‘Oh dear God,’ said McCann again. Her face was pale, with smooth, alabaster skin, one eye open and staring lifelessly at the sky. It was as if she had fallen there from heaven unannounced.

The forensic officer wiped his hands and peeled off his rubber gloves, looked at his watch.

‘You’ll be McCann,’ he said. ‘Are you the only one they’ve got?’

‘Me and him,’ said McCann, gesturing at the constable who was halfway down the bank behind him.

When they had photographed her from every angle McCann bent over her. He was not sure if the smell was just the smell of the ditch; of rotting, winter undergrowth or if her body had started to rot or perhaps it was something they had done to her, that faint faecal smell that assailed him. He nodded to the forensic officer and gently he rolled her body over so McCann could reach inside her blazer pocket. He knew children and hadn’t he had one of his own and though he didn’t know this one he knew where they’d find the name, sewn in the back of the jacket (but that would mean moving her more) or in the homework diary. Sure enough in her inside pocket he found the sodden blue booklet and the name written on the front cover. He peeled on rubber gloves and held the diary to the light but needed his glasses and put the book back down, laying it on her corpse, then picked it up again, as the name ‘Elizabeth McCabe 4C’ swam into view along with the name of the school printed there.

The forensic officer leant over his shoulder, peering too.

‘Is that an Academy girl?’ he said, disbelievingly.

‘Aye,’ said McCann, flicking through the pages, prizing them apart.

‘Algebra,’ he said, looking at the homework entry, a wee smiley face beside it and a love heart and the name of some pop star doodled there and decorated.

‘This is a weird one,’ said the forensic officer. ‘Almost normal. Almost like the old days.’

‘What d’you mean normal?’ said McCann, suddenly disgusted and turning away he climbed back up the bank, slipping as he went, right up onto the deserted roadway, drawing in the air up there, looking over at the grey estate walls and the tricolour flags flying. He put his police hat on and glared at the blank windows opposite, took out a cigarette and lit it up, drawing down the smoke, his hands shaking. Then he walked back to the Land Rover, taking his time.

On the drive back to the station he asked the driver to stop to pick up a couple of packs of cigarettes, choosing one of the big outlets on the Lisburn Road that was anonymous, with armoured glass in the windows. Once he’d got the cigarettes he used the radio to call in, recognising the desk sergeant’s voice.

‘Morning Amanda.’

‘Peter?’ she said.

‘Michael.’

‘Oh sorry. I thought you were Peter.’

‘You’re taking the piss.’

She laughed.

‘You boys are all the same to me,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I need more fellows on this,’ he said.

‘Don’t we all,’ she said.

‘I’ve got a girl been murdered. Can you ask the boss to give us a minute this morning? He’ll be wanting the branch on it too,’ he added as an afterthought, biting his thumbnail, regretting the mess that would involve. But he knew it was unavoidable; bringing in Castlereagh2 with its fancy special branch men. Better to ask first and start on the right foot than have the branch feel they’d to impose themselves later.

But when he checked the missing persons’ reports back at Division, there was nothing that resembled the missing girl. He sucked his lower lip, leaning over the desk sergeant as her finger ran down the reports.

‘From the Royal Academy, you say?’

‘Aye.’

The desk sergeant raised her eyebrows. She looked very tired, traces of make-up around her eyes, faint lines. McCann had always liked her – she had a certain weariness, a kind of vulnerability that appealed, but that was where he had gone wrong with Irene. There was something oddly humorous about the turn of her mouth too.

‘People don’t top girls from the Academy.’

‘They have this time.’

‘Did they, you know…’ And the desk sergeant lowered her eyes. ‘Interfere with her?’

‘Not that I could see. Forensic’s dealing with it now,’ he said.

Odd the way the girl had become a forensic case, from being Elizabeth McCabe, overnight into the nameless shadows. So, who was she? Not yet missed, maybe she had actually been dropped from heaven. Or already reported somewhere else and in the developing chaos the report had slipped by unnoticed or been ignored.

McCann felt the muscles in his cheek twitching. He hadn’t had a cup of tea since coming down off the mountain. Felt like he needed a bath, someone to ask how he was. Why had the desk sergeant said ‘they’ when it was obvious this would be some single sad, loner, loser who would be easy to find, he wondered? The City would spew him up, spit him out in a matter of hours or days. It was not a place where that kind of crime went unnoticed, particularly not on an Academy girl, a Protestant girl, nor on any girl of any religion. Despite what was becoming of the place, they were decent folk and no one would condone that.

Upstairs he found the corridor to his room full of builders, planks of wood, sheets of fibreboard and he heard the sound of a staple gun. The pace of work was furious and they’d rigged additional lights so they could work on into the evening. Someone had knocked a hole through one of the old barrack walls and the grit and dust of demolition still lingered, fragments of brick scrunching underfoot as he tried to get through to his room, bags of plaster stacked across the corridor.

‘Bringing in some more fellows,’ explained one of the builders.

‘What for?’

‘Fuck knows. They’ve told us to make room for another fifteen fellows.’

‘Keeps you in work anyhow,’ said McCann, unlocking his room, putting on the electric kettle, closing the door behind him trying to drown out the sound of a jack hammer, but then it stopped and someone else started banging in nails and singing ‘The sash my father wore.’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ said McCann and stepped out into the corridor, where a figure in a black leather jacket blocked his way, a duffle bag over his shoulder, heavy fisted, with a red face and a shock of glistening grey hair curling over the back of his open collar. For a moment the two men looked at each other, until the man stood back on his heels, his eyebrows raised with a look of humorous disbelief.

‘Well, well Michael McCann. You here too?’

ThesnarlingfaceofDeevery,loominguptohim,righteousatthelossoftheball,andMcCannjuststraightintohisfacewithhisfistashardashecould.Whack!OntoDeevery’snose,thebloodspurtinglikeoutofageyser,Deeveryfallingback,thewhistleshriekingandtherefereeupthereseparatingthem,puttingalintpadonDeevery’snose,thefellowsmillingabout,peeringin.

‘Heypal,’saidthereferee.‘You’dbettercontrolthattemper.’

‘Hewaswindingmeup,’saidMcCann.

Andafterwardsinthechangingroomstheairhadbeendenselyhumid,thewallsdrippingwithcondensationfromtheshowers,thefloorsplatteredwithmud,palebodiessteaminginthehotshowers,Deeverylaidoutonthewoodenslattedbenchwiththepadheldtohisnosebythecoach,redbloodfillingit.TherewasaspacearoundMcCann;asenseofrepressedcongratulation.Intheshowerhesoapedhimself,feelingthehotwatertakeawaythepainofthematch,thepainofallofit.Deeverylaidoutflatwithanosebleed!Howgoodhadthatbeen?

‘Deevery,’ said McCann. ‘William Deevery. How are you son?’

And he reached out his hand and Deevery gripped it hard, leant in to him, clapped him on the shoulder and held him.

‘What’re you doing here? Not keeping you busy enough in Londonderry?’

‘Need to show you boys how the job’s done,’ said Deevery.

‘How’s that?’

‘I’m up for the DCI’s job. You’re not on the shortlist then?’

‘Shortlist?’

‘You’ll have applied then?’

McCann felt a moment’s panic. He had been told to apply, but he’d heard nothing, not expected to hear anything yet and here was Deevery with his interview uniform still in its dry cleaner’s cellophane poking out of the bag over his shoulder.

The Superintendent’s office was up a flight of uncarpeted stairs at the back of the building, and from the window the Superintendent could look down into the car park below to see who was coming and going.

‘I’ll just see if he’s in,’ said his secretary, the door half open into the spacious interior, where McCann could see Superintendent Ray Jones behind his desk with the table lamp on casting a soft yellow glow, an early morning cup of tea steaming on its green baize surface, which was spread with papers arranged for signing. He was a large man, with fine grey hair, glossy in the light from the lamp and a slightly red complexion. Behind him on the wall an almost life-size photograph of the Queen and Prince Phillip looked down approvingly. He was known by the men as the Poet for his loquacious fondness for a literary turn of phrase. While the secretary pushed buttons and knobs on her phone, trying to ring through to him, McCann stuck his head round the door and he looked up.

‘Ah McCann,’ he said. And then in the same moment he glanced conspicuously at the clock on the wall just as the phone rang on his desk and his secretary announced McCann’s arrival.

‘Yes, he’s here already standing in front of me as bold as brass, Deirdre,’ he said.

‘You know it’d be a lot easier if she’d stop people coming in and used the new system effectively. She’s a new girl you know,’ he explained, stepping away from the desk and walking over to close the door behind McCann. ‘Very nice girl too. She’s a McGready you know, daughter of Bill McGready that has the rose business at Balmoral. Was up there just the other day with Maureen to get some new White Goddess, lovely blooms, McCann. You’re not a gardener, are you? No, I suppose not. It can be very helpful though, lifts the spirits. What is it they say: “A scent is heaven sent to lift the suffering soul”?’

McCann found himself guided across the floor to what the men referred to as the Poet’s ‘romper room’, where he’d arranged three soft leather armchairs in a U shape, with a slightly larger armchair at its centre upon which the Poet enthroned himself, inviting McCann to settle himself in one of the smaller armchairs next to it.

‘So, McCann. Bad news I expect.’

‘We’ve a girl been killed,’ said McCann. ‘She’s a young girl out of the Academy.’

The Poet leant forward.

‘That’s bad,’ he said. ‘That’s very bad indeed. I don’t like to hear that McCann. I don’t like to hear that at all. Lisburn will not be pleased.’ It was as if it was his fault, thought McCann, or he had done it himself. Rather than thinking how he could resource the investigation, the Poet was already wondering how he’d explain it to the high ups in their regular briefing at Lisburn, where the Army, the Police, the Intelligence agencies briefed the Minister. When would it be? Monday. It gave him five days at most before they were onto him.

‘So, I’ll need a couple of constables, a decent sergeant or two and we’ll need the branch on it too sir,’ he said, asking for the maximum, hoping for whatever he could get.

‘I’ve a Detective Inspector Deevery, just attached here from Londonderry,’ said the Poet. ‘You’ll like him. He’s a tough man, hard as the granite rock of our native hills as they say. I’ll ask him to lend you a hand.’

‘I know him already,’ said McCann.

‘All the better then,’ said the Poet. ‘And we’ve a new sergeant, sergeant Thompson, who’s volunteered to come here. She asked to be posted. Must be an ambitious girl McCann, so I’d watch out. Bit of an unknown quantity but you’d need a lady on a case like that, for the family liaison. There’ll be tears involved no doubt McCann and a female officer can be helpful with that.’

‘Yes sir,’ said McCann. It was better than expected, or at least the bad of Deevery was maybe cancelled by the good of having a newly-posted sergeant, a clean pair of hands to balance Deevery’s dirty ones.

‘And the branch will need to be involved of course. Could be political, could be more tit for tat McCann. I’m worried by that. Lisburn will be worried by that. I’ll give Castlereagh a bell.’

‘I’d thought of that sir. Yes of course.’

Now that one was another wild card, thought McCann. He’d never trusted the branch, the same way the branch never trusted the uniformed service, never shared what they knew, just took what they needed and went about things their own way. He hoped the branch would send him someone sensible who would play by the rules.

It was raining, a soft, insistent rain that left tiny droplets of silver moisture across the windscreen of sergeant Emily Thompson’s car. Her daughter sat beside her, belted up in the passenger seat, her school bag at her feet. Thompson had picked her up at eight that morning from her grandmother’s house, where she had stayed overnight and now the girl was tired and listless, responding to Thompson’s questions with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers, interspersed with the occasional ‘alright’ as she fiddled with the controls on the radio, ranging through the channels until she found some jangling pop with crackling reception. Thompson was still overcome with affection for her; her knees in their regulation laddered tights, the skirt she’d turned up to the limit of the rules, her neat hands like Thompson’s own, almost a copy of herself, except that she had her father’s brown eyes. She’d had the girl young, married young and now the marriage part was over the girl was all she had left.

‘We’re here,’ she said, patting the girl’s knee as they turned at the school gates. ‘Best get on.’

‘OK. Bye.’ And then she was gone, with a scramble from the car, Thompson passing her schoolbag out to her, the door slamming, disappearing into the crowd bustling with their umbrellas in front of the school gates as Thompson watched in the rear-view mirror. She adjusted the mirror, checked the last trace of eye shadow was removed, frowning at the first faint lines at the corner of the eyes and around the mouth. She tied her hair back tightly with a hairband, then fiddled with the radio to get the news as she pulled away, one eye watching the cars behind.

She drove down along the motorway, grey mud merging with the water of Belfast Lough away on the left, the familiar gantries of Harland and Wolff shipyard growing larger beneath a lowering sky. Further on, she passed the courthouse and the prison and then up to Carlisle Circus, a no-man’s-land owned by neither party, sandwiched between the Republican New Lodge and Loyalist Shankill. On instinct, she adjusted the rearview mirror to make sure she’d not picked up anyone along the way and was pleased to see an army foot patrol fanning out from a side street, moving from doorway to doorway. They’d given her a new number plate just the previous week, but a pale blue Morris Minor with a scrape down the offside door would still be recognised and it’d only be a matter of time before they’d have it marked.

Along the Crumlin Road a few shops were open, Union flags flying, the kerbstones painted on the Shankill side in red, white and blue. Higher up on the right in the Ardoyne, everything would be in green, white and gold instead. As she approached the police station she wondered where the watcher or watchers would be. Maybe they’d a whole rota for them; the milkman, the paperboy, the fellows working on the roads could be noticing that blue Morris Minor turning into the barracks. She’d get herself a new car now she’d had the promotion, something like a Cortina that everyone had, two years old, get the numbers changed straight away. If only Brian would pay the alimony money that was due. Then she was there, hard left by the church, then hard right through the chicane of steel doors and up into the car pound with its high walls and wire netting overhead, like she was a fish in a tank in some smart restaurant.

‘I’m looking for Inspector McCann,’ she said, showing her ID at the desk and was given directions to his room; along a corridor with green linoleum, through battered swing doors, up two floors in a lift that smelt of sweat and creaked and swayed, left along another corridor full of builders, past an open door where she knocked and entered.

McCann stood up, pre-occupied, awkward.

‘Hello sir. I’m sergeant Thompson. I’ve come to C Division and they tell me you’ve some work for me to do?’

‘Aye, yes that’s right. Just in the nick of time sergeant. You’ve got your coat? Good. You can come with me right now.’ And McCann turned her round by the elbow, like he was arresting her for some minor misdemeanour and marched her back down in the lift to the car pound.

Out on the road he explained the situation. Thompson sat silent for a while as they drove, watching the traffic as they turned towards the girl’s school.

‘Children of your own then?’ asked McCann, almost in passing, as he pulled out into a gap in the slow-moving traffic.

‘Girl of fifteen.’

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘What do you mean, sorry?’ said Thompson.

‘Might be hard for you, that’s all,’ he said.

Detective Sergeant Clarke caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror, sideways on, checked that there was no sign of a belly yet, his stomach still tanned and flat, the legs muscular. He shaved using his new electric razor, running it up and down the smooth jawbone, keeping an eye on himself in the mirror as he did so, then dabbing aftershave and giving his hair a careful brush. Back in the bedroom he opened the cupboard, the smell of fresh woodwork and clean, laundered shirts came from inside. He selected a light blue shirt, brand new, with a crisp collar and heavy fabric and slipped it on, leaving the top two buttons undone, then a pair of cords from Austin Reed, the new season’s cut, with a heavy drape at the knee. Anonymous, but smart too, so you could get closer to the people that mattered.

He buckled his heavy leather belt and walked into the kitchen. The coffee machine burbled gently on the white Formica worktop. He poured and sipped the coffee, looking down at the City from his fourth-floor window. He wondered about the new attachment; he’d to make contact with an Inspector McCann. Something about a Protestant girl killed and dumped in a Republican area. He frowned at that dangerous new development. He could see over to the hills where a column of black smoke was beginning to rise from near the Springfield Road, like a curled fist at first, slowly unfurling, opening out and widening as it rose into the air. Overhead an army helicopter buzzed like an angry wasp in and out of the column of smoke, tilting and turning to get a view of what was happening down below. He knocked back his coffee, picked up his Walther in its holster from the bedside table, buckled it on, then slung a loose-fitting blue cashmere-wool jacket on top, so the comforting bulge wouldn’t show. He went down in the lift to the car park, bending to check for booby traps underneath the car, running his hand along the floor pan either side, before unlocking and using a tissue from a fresh packet beneath the dashboard to clean the filth away, putting the soiled paper neatly in the bin by the exit.

Before going on to C Division Clarke dropped over to headquarters to get a bit of background on McCann. It was not a name he’d heard before. He thanked the girl in Personnel who brought him the file and sat himself down in the waiting area to flick over it. McCann had been born in Achnakerrig, County Armagh, educated locally, passed out in 1953. He was a decorated officer, received the Commander’s medal in 1974. He had been posted to Londonderry, then Belfast, eight years an Inspector at C Division. That was a long stretch for any man, thought Clarke, to be in one of the worst posts. That would break the toughest fellow, he thought. That would make you wonder if McCann was really the man for the job.

Notes

1UVF – Ulster Volunteer Force

2Castlereagh was where the special branch was located. The branch concentrated on intelligence work.

Chapter Two

The Academy was a large school, set back from the road behind high railings, the main buildings in a granite gothic style darkened by coal smoke. A pair of silver birches, stripped bare and stark, overlooked the school office. The pupils were all in class and the place seemed deserted as McCann parked his car in the visitor’s parking bay next to the space reserved for the head teacher. He glanced into the car that was parked there as he climbed out, noticing it was new, the slew of papers on the floor in the front, automatically checking the licence disk like some weird inappropriate reflex. He chucked his keys in one hand and hummed a nameless tune as he hunched into the rain, Thompson following behind.

‘Like the grim reaper,’ he thought to himself, involuntarily, his coat tails flapping in the wind, the rain seeping through.

‘We’ve come to see the head teacher,’ he said and put his ID down on the high desk at reception.

‘Have you an appointment?’

‘I don’t need one,’ said McCann, adding unnecessarily, ‘I’m a police officer.’ The secretary rang through to the head-mistress from the inside office, behind glass so McCann couldn’t hear what their introduction would be.

Soon enough though she took up her bunch of keys and led them through a series of locked doors down into the school, walking in silence across a wet quadrangle.

‘Been here long?’ he asked.

‘Long enough,’ she said.

The headmistress greeted McCann and Thompson like old friends.

‘Inspector McCann!’ she cried. ‘And sergeant Thompson!’ coming out from behind her desk and shaking hands warmly.

‘I’m Annie Brown. Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee or tea or anything at all? It’s such a grim old day, isn’t it?’

Her hair was cut in a bob, her face very pale, with a poor complexion disguised with powder, but she had a pleasing figure and was smartly dressed in a dark suit with a short jacket in a modern style.

‘So, you’ll be here for the security,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember the man that did it last year. Morrison maybe, Morton?’ She squinted in a perplexed kind of way and then waved her hand. ‘No matter,’ she said, as if names associated with tedious form-filling were not worth remembering. She had the slightly intense movements of a smoker. McCann shifted in his seat.

‘Eh no,’ he said. ‘Actually it’s a wee bit more serious otherwise we wouldn’t bother you like this.’

Her eyes opened wider and she fixed him with a still gaze.

‘D’you have a girl called Elizabeth McCabe?’ he asked.

‘Oh Lizzie!’ she said. ‘Oh, dear God what’s she done now?’

He ignored the question.

‘Can we see if she’s in school today?’

‘Oh yes, certainly.’ She picked up the phone, checking the morning register with the form master. As she listened to the answer somewhere a bell tolled and McCann heard the noise of shouts, of chairs being pushed back, of doors banging and living feet clattering along the corridors as if his question had raised the dead.

‘She’s not. The form master was just ringing her parents. She’s not been home,’ she said. And McCann saw her warmth towards him evaporate and she took one slight, imperceptible step back from him, awkwardly, as if there was some kind of smell now coming from him that she was too polite to mention.

‘She’s been found dead,’ said McCann.

‘Oh!’ said the head teacher. ‘Oh, dear God!’ and she put her hand to her mouth and turned her back to them for a moment while she looked out at the mountain, composing herself.

‘Murdered, and we’ve to consider anyone who might have been in contact with her or know anything about it.’

‘You’ll be wanting to talk to the staff, her friends, I suppose.’

‘We’ll do the parents first,’ said McCann.

‘You’ve not told them! No of course not, that’s stupid of me. Yes, yes, you’ll need to do that of course. Dear God I’ll have to tell the school too.’ Then she looked at her watch, suddenly efficient, calculating the best time to break the news.

They found the house easily. It was well set back from the road, with a long drive that curved back from the gates, rhododendrons pressing in on either side, the leaves deep green and streaming with the recent rain. He left the car outside in the road, opened the gate and began to walk up to the house, the path newly laid in fine red gravel, the stones scattered a little in the borders of the lawn by the passage of cars. In front of the house a new Mini was parked, with space for another car alongside. A fellow was out spreading mulch in the flowerbeds and paused in his work to stare at them both. He rang the bell and waited for a moment, a faint hope stirring that he could postpone it all until he saw a face at the door and heard the bolts being drawn back.

‘Good morning. Mrs McCabe is it?’ he said. The woman was dressed as if for an aerobics class, or one of those new-fangled step classes that his own wife had tried and then given up. She was rich enough to be able to look ten years younger than maybe she was, too young looking even to be the mother of the dead girl.

‘Mrs McCabe? I’m DI McCann from Castle Street. And this is sergeant Thompson. Do you mind if we come in?’

The house was modern, with a wide-open hall with a parquet floor of freshly polished beech wood that was flooded with light from the open front door. He could hear a radio playing.

‘It’ll be about Lizzie won’t it? I’ve had a call from the school asking if we’d seen her. She was due a sleepover and she never arrived,’ she said, alarm rising in her voice.

‘Is your husband at home?’ McCann asked.

‘What’s happened? What do you need him for?’

‘It’d be best if the two of you were here.’

‘He’s at work. I’ll give him a call. I was just doing that,’ half moving towards the phone, then back towards McCann.

‘I wonder is there somewhere we can sit down?’ suggested Thompson, looking through towards the living room.

‘Maybe it’s best you take a seat,’ said McCann. ‘The sergeant here can make us some tea. I’ve some bad news to share I’m afraid.’ And very gently he touched her elbow, and led her to the sofa in the living room.

‘Do you have any idea at all how she could’ve been taken?’ McCann asked. The coffee table between them was strewn with tissues, her tea untouched, her face wet with tears. The living room alone was almost the same size as McCann’s house, with a ceiling to floor picture window running the length of one wall. Outside the lawn fell away to the lough, around freshly laid beds of roses, edged with stone.

‘She was due to stay at her friend Minnie’s,’ her mother repeated. Her make-up had run. From time to time she sobbed, awful wrenching sobs that made her shoulders shake.

‘We’ll need the address, the name, details of the girl,’ said Thompson. Although the room was large and light and designed to give an airy sense of space, it was still claustrophobic and hard to breathe, as if the double glazing had restricted the oxygen supply.

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ she said, brought out her diary, fumbling with it on the table while Thompson took down the details.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘I just don’t know what we’re going to do.’

Just then there was the noise of a car turning on the gravel outside, a key in the lock and rapid footsteps in the hall. McCann stood up as a tall man, dressed in a dark business suit entered the room, glanced around, introduced himself.

‘Peter McCabe. What’s all this about Inspector?’