Dark Dawn (21 page)

‘Don’t mock, son. It doesn’t suit you.’

O’Neill could smell the waft of tobacco coming through the grille.

‘Still at the Dunhills, I see. You know those things’ll kill you.’

‘Well, I’ve got to do something to get out of here. Forty years in Belfast – a life sentence by any man’s reckoning.’

‘You’ve not seen the news then? The Promised Land. The new Northern Ireland.’

‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’

There was a pause in their conversation.

‘I need your help, Donal.’

‘You need my help? Or the PSNI needs my help? Because you see it’s interesting. The PSNI spend their days harassing my congregation and then they come round here asking for help?’

O’Neill had almost forgotten Mullan’s style. He was like a bantamweight boxer. A conversation was a sparring match. He had taught the same way. St Malachy’s had 700 teenage boys and they all had an answer for you. There wasn’t much choice.

‘You know about Laganview, Donal?’

‘Saw it on the news.’

‘I’m in the dark. Completely in the dark.’

‘We’re all in the dark, son. That’s how the world works.’

O’Neill knew Mullan was a strong Republican. According to him, Irish history taught its own lessons. It was a list of wrongs, a litany of sins against Irish Catholics, first by the British, and then by the Protestants in the North. Mullan used to tell them: ‘A creed. A man’s got to have a creed.’ O’Neill could feel the door closing on him and the priest retreating into his shell.

‘Do you remember Raymond Burns, Father?’

‘I remember you all, O’Neill. Every last one of you.’ Mullan sighed. ‘Burns was from the Ardoyne. A cheekier wee bastard you wouldn’t want to meet.’

‘Let me tell you about Raymond Burns. He has a wee brother, Jackie Burns, ten years younger. Wee Jackie is sixteen. Thinks he’s a big lad. Decided to have a go at nicking cars. He got away with it, or at least he did for a couple of months. One day he’s walking to the shops when a couple of men grab him off the street. Broad daylight. They know what he’s been doing and he needs to be taught a lesson. They put him down a manhole. And put the lid back on. Wee Jackie’s screaming. Begging. He’s claustrophobic, you see. But fuck it, down he goes. These wee bastards, you see, they never listen. Now those manhole covers are pretty thick. Six inches of heavy iron. It fairly muffles the screams.’

O’Neill felt the priest listening on the other side of the mesh.

‘They left him there for three hours,’ he said. ‘Three fucking hours. By the time they let him out he’d lost his voice. He’d shredded his vocal cords screaming so much. He’d pissed himself and shit himself. Sixteen years old, Donal. Not shaving yet. They’re laughing as they lift him out. “Dirty wee bastard. Look at the state of you.” And they leave him there. Just lying by the side of the road.’

O’Neill cleared his throat.

‘You probably saw the rest of it on the news. The anti-depressants. Wouldn’t leave the house. In the end he hanged himself. His mother found him in the entry round the back of the estate.’

O’Neill stopped talking. He could hear the priest breathing on the far side of the grille.

‘But you’ve probably seen this all before, Donal. The seventies. Wee girls kissing soldiers. Hoors, the lot of them. Chain them up. Shave their heads. Get the tar. Teach them some lessons, eh, Donal? Pearse, Connolly, Collins – I forget which one spoke about torturing kids. A man’s got to have a creed. That’s right, isn’t it?’

O’Neill stopped. He had gone too far. The frustration of the past two weeks had boiled over. It was all mixed up inside him. The images of Laganview, the kid’s legs, his blood, his face. The story filled the confessional, making the space seem smaller, as if the air had been breathed too much.

‘Laganview, Donal. Somebody out there knows something.’

O’Neill slid one of his PSNI cards under the mesh. He then got up and left the confessional, walking through the empty church, out of the heavy wooden doors. The sky had greyed over while he had been inside. As he got into the car, specks began to appear on the windscreen. The rain was starting up again.

Back in Musgrave Street, Ward was thinking about Spender.

He’d gone fishing after his visit to Cultra. The projects Spender had been involved in: the houses on the High Town Road, the investments in the Cathedral Quarter, Laganview, and the next one, the Ormeau Gasworks. Apart from the retracted complaint, twenty years back, the man looked clean. He might be rich, and he might be an arsehole, but so far, none of that was illegal, Ward told himself.

On his way into work Ward had stopped at a
ESSO
garage to get petrol. He watched two teenagers getting out of car. The girl had long blonde hair, just like . . .

That was it. Spender’s kids.

When he got to Musgrave Street he ran both kids through the Police National Computer. The daughter, Zara, was clean. The son, Phillip, was a different story.

A string of minor offences went back to 1999 when he was seventeen. Shoplifting, theft, possession. It had drugs written all over it. In 2001 it had stopped for six months, then a couple more, this time in Manchester. Ward remembered Mrs Spender saying the kids were across the water. He must have gone away to university, cleaned up for a while, or at least had a student loan to cover his habit. When that ran out he would have needed to get busy again.

Ward imagined how it would have gone. The parents cutting off the money. He started stealing. It escalated from there. He sighed, knowing he could pull out a thousand files with exactly the same story.

Ward looked in his notebook, picked up the phone and dialled a number. A secretary answered.

‘William Spender, please.’

‘Can I ask who’s calling?’

‘DI Ward, Musgrave Street.’

‘One moment, please.’

He didn’t think Spender would talk to him, but the call would get the girls in the typing pool going if nothing else. Ten seconds later the secretary was back.

‘I’m sorry, Detective, Mr Spender is busy. Can I take a message?’

‘Just tell him I called.’

Ward had found out what he needed to know. He grabbed the car keys for the Mondeo and left the office.

Twenty minutes later in Cultra, a black iron gate slowly opened, admitting the navy Mondeo. At the front door Ward was greeted by Spender’s wife. He knew he would be.

‘My husband’s not at home, Detective.’

‘If it’s OK, I’d like to ask
you
a few questions, Mrs Spender.’

Ward was unassuming. Kind yet assertive. Not giving her anywhere to go. He knew if you started easy you could always press harder.

In the kitchen Mrs Spender sat at the table. The room was expensively furnished. Polished granite counters. Large chrome cooker. Sliding glass doors. Outside, a wide patio with steps to the lawn, swept down to the waters of Belfast Lough.

Mrs Spender was nervous and kept glancing towards the door. Ward did nothing to put her at her ease. He took his time, allowing the simple fact that he was there to discomfort the woman. Mrs Spender lifted a cup of coffee. Ward figured it was to give her hands something to do. She didn’t offer him one.

‘You know what this is about, Mrs Spender?’

‘No, I’m not sure I do.’

‘Did your husband say why I came to see him last week?’

‘He didn’t.’

‘So you’ve absolutely no idea?’

‘I watch the news, Detective. The body on the building site. Makes sense you want to speak to people – my husband included.’

‘Did he tell you any more than that?’

‘My husband’s a busy man.’

Ward paused as the woman took a sip of coffee. She was gathering confidence, attempting to hide behind a wall of ignorance.

‘Why did you lie to me, Mrs Spender?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Ward repeated the accusation.

‘I didn’t lie.’

‘You didn’t tell me about the drugs.’

‘What drugs?’ The woman went on the defensive. ‘My son isn’t involved in drugs.’

Ward stopped and looked at Mrs Spender. The words hung in the air, revealing that she had overstepped the mark, said more than she meant to.

‘Who said anything about your son?’

Mrs Spender realized she’d been caught by Ward’s bluff. The detective started pressing home his advantage.

‘Lying to the police is a serious offence, Mrs Spender. You can go to jail.’

The woman was unnerved. Ward could see the tears, hidden just below the surface. As quickly as he saw them rise, she forced them back down. Ward imagined she’d had plenty of practice keeping them at bay. All the dinner parties. The questions.
How are the kids? How is Zara? And what about Phillip? You’ll have to bring them round.

Ward wondered what it must be like to love someone and then be worried, embarrassed and ashamed, all at the same time. He walked to the counter and lifted down a framed photograph of the two Spender children. He held it in his hands before setting it down on the kitchen table.

‘How old is Phillip in this?’

‘Seven.’

‘Amazing. I’ll bet you can remember it like it was yesterday.’

Ward watched the woman’s eyes look up and to the right as she remembered. She was thinking about Phillip as a boy. Seven years old. Still a kid. Ward kept working.

‘Seven, eh? What was he into? Action Men? Star Wars? Those Ninja Turtle things?’

‘Star Wars. He had every one of those bloody figures. I used to end up standing on them and having to buy him new ones.’

Ward laughed gently. ‘How old is he now?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Manchester. Or so we think.’ There was a sadness in the woman’s voice. As if she was talking about someone who had recently passed away.

‘When was the last time you heard from him?’

Mrs Spender’s nose started to run. She sniffed, having to hold back the tears again. Ward handed her a tissue.

‘Sixteen months ago.’

It was as if a release valve had been turned in her.

‘How long has he been a drug addict?’

‘It started when he was seventeen – so we think, anyway. He was doing his A-levels. Didn’t like school so decided to do them at the Tech in Belfast. He must have fallen in with the wrong crowd. Started going into the town at weekends, Friday night right through. He would come home Sunday morning with bags under his eyes. As if he hadn’t slept for days. We tried everything. Stopped his money. He wasn’t allowed out. He climbed out his bedroom window and went anyway.’

Mrs Spender looked past Ward, into the middle distance.

‘He went to Manchester for university. Things seemed to settle down. The first Christmas he came home he looked OK. By the summer he’d lost half a stone. His skin was a yellowy grey colour. He would disappear for weeks at a time. Then he’d turn up out of the blue. He started stealing from us – from his own family. It was my fault. I raised him, William was always busy. The next Christmas, he never came home. We got a letter saying he’d been thrown out of the university at the end of his first year. We haven’t heard from him since then. Sixteen months.’

Ward had a sudden sinking feeling. Could the body at Laganview be Phillip Spender? The police hadn’t released a photograph, only a description and an appeal for information. What if he had come back? What if he’d owed some people money? Someone could have tried to get to Spender through his son.

Ward sighed. There was nothing else for it. He produced a photograph of the victim from his jacket pocket.

‘Mrs Spender, do you recognize this boy?’

The woman suddenly realized what Ward was trying to ascertain. The colour drained from her face. She looked at the photograph with an expression of horror, then shook her head. It wasn’t Phillip.

‘Mrs Spender, that feeling you’ve got – the one for Phillip – the hurt you feel for him. Because you’re his mother. Because you carried him round inside you for nine months. Because you gave birth to him, because you fed him, because you were everything to him. There is another mother out there, feeling exactly the same thing – except her son is lying on a slab in the Belfast morgue. She doesn’t even know he’s there. He’s alone. Completely alone. She needs to know what happened to him. She needs to come and get him.’

Ward stopped talking, setting the photograph on the table, beside the framed picture of the two Spender children.

‘You can help this woman. You can help her by helping us.’

Karen Spender looked round the room, searching for something to hold on to. Her mind was racing. Was it William’s fault Phillip had turned out the way he had? The arrogance. The greed. Never having time for him. Or was it her? Had she been too soft on him? Just letting him do what he wanted? And would someone out there speak up if something like this happened to her Phillip? If he was lying somewhere with the same lifeless expression?

The emotions whirled through her. She felt sick. Ward was offering her a way out.

‘There was a book,’ she said thickly.

‘A book?’

‘A small black book. William found it in Phillip’s room a couple of weeks ago. It had phone numbers in it – Belfast numbers. There were initials beside them. We figured it was the people he was getting his drugs from.’

‘Where is it now?’

‘I don’t know. William took it.’

‘And where was William on Sunday evening, a fortnight ago?’

She hesitated for a second. Then: ‘He was here.’

Ward noticed the pause. She was lying outright or else trying to cover something up. Mrs Spender looked at the detective. A veil fell from her eyes as if she had suddenly awoken. She remembered where she was and who she was talking to. The kitchen, with all its familiarity, seemed to rally round, to prop her up.

‘Detective, my husband is a respectable businessman. If you have any questions about his affairs, I suggest you take them up with him.’

She stood up.

‘If you’ll excuse me, I have quite a lot of things to get on with.’

‘One last thing, Mrs Spender.’

He produced a photograph of Tony Burke, one they’d lifted from the video recording of his interview. He also had one of Michael Burke, a copy of his arrest mug shot from an old RUC file.