10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (182 page)

And then they were down. Smylie was quick to stand up. The seat had been too narrow for him, with not enough legroom. He worked his neck and shoulders, then rubbed his knees.

‘Welcome to Belfast,’ he said.

‘We like to give visitors the tour,’ Yates said.

He was Inspector Yates of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and both he and his car were in mufti. He had a face formed of fist-fights or bad childhood infections, scar tissue and things not quite in their right place. His nose veered leftwards, one earlobe hung lower than the other, and his chin had been stitched together not altogether successfully. You’d look at him in a bar and then look away again quickly, not risking the stare he deserved. He had no neck, that was another thing. His head sat on his shoulders like a boulder on the top of a hill.

‘That’s very kind,’ said Smylie, as they sped into town, ‘but we’d –’

‘Lets you see what we’re dealing with.’ Yates kept looking in his rearview, conducting a conversation with the mirror. ‘The two cities. It’s the same in any war zone. I knew this guy, height of the trouble in Beirut, he was recruited as a croupier there. Bombs falling, gunmen on the rampage, and the casinos were still open. Now these,’ he nodded out of the windscreen, ‘are the recruiting stations.’

They had left the City Airport behind, shaved the city’s commercial centre, and were passing through a wasteland. Until now, you couldn’t have said which British city you were in. A new road was being built down by the docks. Old flats, no worse than those in the Gar-B, were being demolished. As Yates had commented, sometimes the divide was hidden.

Not far away, a helicopter hovered high in the sky, watching someone or something. Around them, whole streets had been bulldozed. The kerbstones were painted green and white.

‘You’ll see red, white and blue ones in other areas.’

On the gable-end of a row of houses was an elaborate painting. Rebus could make out three masked figures, their automatic weapons raised high. There was a tricolour above them, and a phoenix rising from flames above this.

‘A nice piece of propaganda,’ said Rebus.

Yates turned to Smylie. ‘Your man knows what he’s talking about. It’s a work of art. These are some of the poorest streets in Europe, by the way.’

They didn’t look so bad to Rebus. The gable-end had reminded him again of the Gar-B. Only there was more rebuilding going on here. New housing developments were rising from the old.

‘See that wall?’ said Yates. ‘That’s called an environmental wall built and maintained by the Housing Executive.’ It was a red brick wall, functional, with a pattern in the bricks. ‘There used to be houses there. The other side of the wall is Protestant, once you get past the wasteland. They knock down the houses and extend the wall. There’s the Peace Line too, that’s an ugly old thing, made from iron rather than bricks. Streets like these, they’re meat and drink to the paramilitaries. The loyalist areas are the same.’

Eyes were following their slow progress, the eyes of teenagers and children grouped at street corners. The eyes held neither fear nor hate, only mistrust. On a wall, someone had daubed painted messages, old references to the H Block and Bobby Sands, newer additions in praise of the IRA, and promising revenge against the loyalist paramilitaries, the UVF and UFF predominantly. Rebus saw himself patrolling these streets, or streets like them, back when there had been more houses, more people on the move. He’d often been the ‘back walker’, which meant he stayed at the back of the patrol and faced the rear, his gun pointing towards the people they’d just passed, men staring at the ground, kids making rude gestures, shows of bravado, and mothers pushing prams. The patrol moved as cautiously as in any jungle.

‘See, here we are,’ Yates was saying, ‘we’re coming into Protestant territory now.’ More gable-ends, now painted with ten-foot-high Williams of Orange riding twenty-foot-high white horses. And then the cheaper displays, the graffiti, exhorting the locals to ‘Fuck the Pope and the IRA’. The letters FTP were everywhere. Five minutes before, they had been FKB: Fuck King Billy. They were just routine, a reflex. But of course they were more. You couldn’t laugh them off as name-calling, because the people who’d written them wouldn’t let you. They kept shooting each other, and blowing each other up.

Smylie read one of the slogans aloud. ‘“Irish Out”.’ He turned to Yates. ‘What? All of them?’

Yates smiled. ‘The Catholics write “Troops Out”, so the loyalists write “Irish Out”. They don’t see themselves as Irish, they’re British.’ He looked in the mirror again. ‘And they’re getting more vicious, loyalist paramilitaries killed more civvies last year than the IRA did. That’s a first, so far as I know. The loyalists hate us now, too.’

‘Who’s us?’

‘The RUC. They weren’t happy when the UDA was outlawed. Your man, Sir Patrick Mayhew, he lit the fuse.’

‘I read about some riots.’

‘Only last month, here in the Shankill and elsewhere. They say we’re harassing them. We can’t really win, can we?’

‘I think we get the picture,’ said Smylie, anxious to get to work. But Rebus knew the point the RUC man was making: this
was
their work.

‘If you think you get the picture,’ Yates said, ‘then you’re not getting the picture. You’re to blame, you know.’

‘Eh?’

‘The Scots. You settled here in the seventeenth century, started pushing around the Catholics.’

‘I don’t think we need a history lesson,’ Rebus said quietly. Smylie was looking like he might explode.

‘But it’s all about history,’ Yates said levelly. ‘On the surface at least.’

‘And underneath?’

‘Paramilitaries are in the business of making money. They can’t exist without money. So now they’ve become gangsters, pure and simple, because that’s the easy way to make the money they need. And then it becomes self-perpetuating. The IRA and UDA get together now and then and discuss things. They sit around a table together, just like the politicians want them to, but instead of talking about peace, they talk about carving up the country. You can extort from these taxi firms if we can extort from the building sites. You even get cases where the stuff the one side has stolen is passed on to the other for them to sell in their areas. You get times when the tension’s high, then it’s back to business as usual. It’s like one of those mafia films, the money these bastards are making . . .’ Yates shook his head. ‘They can’t
afford
peace. It’d be bad for business.’

‘And bad for your business too.’

Yates laughed. ‘Aye, right enough, overtime wouldn’t be easy to come by. But then we might live to retirement age, too. That doesn’t always happen just now.’ Yates had lifted his radio transmitter. ‘Two-Six-Zero, I’m about five minutes from base. Two passengers.’ The radio spat static.

‘Received and understood.’

He put down the receiver. ‘Now this,’ he said, ‘this is Belfast too. South Belfast, you don’t hear much about it because hardly anything ever happens here. See what I mean about two cities?’

Rebus had been noticing the change in their surroundings. Suddenly it looked prosperous, safe. There were wide tree-lined avenues, detached houses, some of them very new-looking. They’d passed the university, a red-brick replica of some older college. Yet they were still only ten minutes from ‘the Troubles’. Rebus knew this face of the city, too. He’d only spent the one tour of duty here, but he remembered the big houses, the busy city centre, the Victorian pubs whose interiors were regarded as national treasures. He knew the city was surrounded by lush green countryside, winding lanes and farm tracks, at the end of which might sit silent milk-churns packed with explosives.

The RUC station on the Malone Road was a well-disguised affair, tucked away behind a wooden fence, with a discreet lookout tower.

‘We have to keep up appearances for the locals,’ Yates explained. ‘This is a nice part of town, no mesh fences and machine guns.’

The gates had been opened for them, and closed quickly again.

‘Thanks for the tour,’ Rebus said as they parked. He meant it, something Yates acknowledged with a nod. Smylie opened his door and prised himself out. Yates glanced at the upholstery, then opened the glove compartment and lifted out his holstered pistol, bringing it with him.

‘Is your accent Irish?’ Rebus asked.

‘Mostly. There’s a bit of Liverpool in there too. I was born in Bootle, we moved here when I was six.’

‘What made you join the RUC?’ Smylie asked.

‘I’ve always been a stupid bastard, I suppose.’

He had to sign both visitors into the building, and their identities were checked. Later, Rebus knew, some clerical assistant would add them to a computer file.

Inside, the station looked much like any police station, except that the windows were heavily protected and the beat patrols carried padded vests with them and wore holsters. They’d seen policemen during their drive, but had acknowledged none of them. And they’d passed a single Army patrol, young squaddies sitting at the open rear door of their personnel carrier (known as a ‘pig’ in Rebus’s day, and probably still), automatic rifles held lightly, faces trained not to show emotion. In the station, the windows might be well protected but there seemed little sign of a siege mentality. The jokes were just as blue, just as black, as the ones told in Edinburgh. People discussed TV and football and the weather. Smylie wasn’t watching any of it. He wanted the job done and out again as quick as could be.

Rebus wasn’t sure about Smylie. The man might be a wonder in the office, as efficient as the day was long, but here he seemed less sure of himself. He was nervous, and showed it. When he took his jacket off, complaining of the heat, there were large sweat marks spreading from beneath his arms. Rebus had thought
he’d
be the nervous one, yet he felt detached, his memories bringing back no new fears. He was all right.

Yates had a small office to himself. They’d bought beakers of tea at a machine, and now sat these on the desk. Yates put his gun into a desk drawer, draped his jacket over his chair, and sat down. Pinned above him on the wall behind the desk was a sheet of computer print-out bearing the oversized words
Nil Illegitimum Non Carborundum
. Smylie decided to take a poke.

‘I thought Latin was for the Catholics?’

Yates stared at him. ‘There
are
Catholics in the RUC. Don’t get us confused with the UDR.’ Then he unlocked another drawer and pulled out a file, pushing it across the desk towards Rebus. ‘This doesn’t leave the room.’ Smylie drew his chair towards Rebus’s, and they read the contents together, Smylie, the faster reader, fidgeting as he waited for Rebus to catch up.

‘This is incredible,’ Smylie said at one point. He was right. The RUC had evidence of a loyalist paramilitary force called Sword and Shield (usually just referred to as The Shield), and of a support group working out of the mainland, acting as a conduit through which money and arms could pass, and also raising funds independently.

‘By mainland do you mean Scotland?’ Rebus asked.

Yates shrugged. ‘We’re not really taking them seriously, it’s just a cover name for the UVF or UFF, got to be. That’s the way it works. There are so many of these wee groups, Ulster Resistance, the Red Hands Commando, Knights of the Red Hand, we can hardly keep up with them.’

‘But this group is on the mainland,’ Rebus said.

‘Yes.’

‘And we’ve maybe come up against them.’ He tapped the folder. ‘Yet nobody thought to tell us any of this.’

Yates shrugged again, his head falling further into his body. ‘We leave that to Special Branch.’

‘You mean Special Branch were told about this?’

‘Special Branch here would inform Special Branch in London.’

‘Any idea who the contact would be in London?’

‘That’s classified information, Inspector, sorry.’

‘A man called Abernethy?’

Yates pushed his chair back so he could rock on it, the front two legs coming off the floor. He studied Rebus.

‘That’s answer enough,’ Rebus said. He looked to Smylie, who nodded. They were being screwed around by Special Branch. But why?

‘I see something’s on your mind,’ said Yates. ‘Want to tell me about it? I’d like to hear what you know.’

Rebus placed the folder on the desk. ‘Then come to Edinburgh some time, maybe we’ll tell you.’

Yates placed all four legs of his chair on the floor. When he looked at Rebus, his face was stone, his eyes fire. ‘No need to be like that,’ he said quietly.

‘Why not? We’ve wasted a whole day for four sheets of filing paper, all because you wouldn’t send it to us!’

‘It’s nothing personal, Inspector, it’s security. Wouldn’t matter if you were the Chief fucking Constable. Perspectives tend to change when your arse is in the line of fire.’

If Yates was looking for the sympathy vote, Rebus wasn’t about to place a cross in his box. ‘The Prods haven’t always been as keen as the Provos, have they? What’s going on?’

‘First off, they’re loyalists, not Prods. Prods means Protestants, and we’re dealing only with a select few, not with all of them. Second, they’re Provies, not Provos. Third . . . we’re not sure. There’s a younger leadership, a keener leadership. Plus like I say, they’re not happy just to let the security forces get on with it. See, the loyalist paramilitaries have always had a problem. They’re supposed to be on the same side as the security forces, they’re supposed to be law-abiding. That’s changed. They feel threatened. Just now they’re the majority, but it won’t always be that way. Plus the British government’s more concerned with its international image than with a few hard-line loyalists, so it’s paying more attention to the Republic. Put all that together and you get disillusioned loyalists, and plenty of them. The loyalist paramilitaries used to have a bad image. A lot of their operations went wrong, they didn’t have the manpower or the connections or the international support of the IRA.

‘These days they seem to be better organised though, not so much blatant racketeering. A lot of the thugs have been put off the Road . . . that is, put off the Shankill Road, as in banished.’

‘But at the same time they’re arming themselves,’ Rebus said.