Dark Dawn (7 page)

‘You trying to get rid of me? Have you got a wee thing with the milkman that you’re not telling me about?’

Maureen smiled and a solitary tear ran down her cheek. That night in bed Ward held her. He told her to wise up, that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Maureen squeezed his hand. He told her he was going to have words with the milkman and all.

When the breast cancer came, Ward knew what she was thinking. She’d got what she deserved. She’d let him down and this was God’s way of punishing her. She did three rounds of chemo but it was too late. Ward had been on his own now for fifteen years.

His mind went back to O’Neill next door in CID. He was having a tough time of it. If the kid was in the drug scene there was no way he wouldn’t have some kind of previous. These kids didn’t have records, they had rap sheets. O’Neill had sent the prints down to the
Garda
in Dublin, in case the boy was from the South and had been dumped in Belfast. Again, it came back a blank.

Ward wondered if this was the perfect crime. He snorted, reminding himself that you only read about such things in dodgy crime books. And anyway, everyone knew the perfect crime was, by definition, the one that no one ever knew about.

Ward tried to think what the play was. O’Neill had done everything right and he was still drowning. It wasn’t his fault though. He’d been sent into choppy waters with a lead weight tied round his ankle.

Ward looked up to see the Chief Inspector stride past his door, a man happy in his work. Wilson rarely came to the second floor, but he’d made the trip on Tuesday, Wednesday and now, again, on Thursday. He was riding the shit out of O’Neill. Keeping the pressure on. Ward thought he might be trying to get O’Neill to take himself off Laganview. To throw in the towel. It would make the Review Boards a walk in the park, a mere formality. It would prove O’Neill couldn’t hack it in plain clothes.

He heard Wilson from along the corridor, interrogating O’Neill.

‘Detective, we’ve given you every resource this station has to offer and you’re telling me you still don’t even have a name for the victim?’

O’Neill didn’t answer.

‘What’s your investigative strategy?’

O’Neill outlined what they’d done so far.

‘Well, that hasn’t worked, so what will you do next? And what are you going to do after that? And what will you do
then
?’

You. You. You. He was putting the whole thing on O’Neill, cranking up the heat, making it
his
job and his job alone.

Ward thought about going in, but crossing the Chief Inspector wasn’t going to help anyone. He remembered when Wilson had first come over to Musgrave Street. Within six months he had the Chief Constable visiting the station. Wilson chaperoned him round, talking about crime rates, how they were down 5 per cent across the whole of B Division.

Wilson might be Chief Inspector, but he wasn’t half the peeler that O’Neill was. Or could be, given half a chance. DC Kearney had told him a story about being out with O’Neill, back when he’d first come over to CID.

It was assault and robbery. A guy had mugged some old dear in the town and uniform had a suspect, Janty Morgan, whom they wanted to bring in for questioning. O’Neill and Kearney were on their way back from another job when they heard the details over the radio.

‘I know him,’ O’Neill said. ‘We’re two minutes away. Let’s swing by and bring him in. I fancy a chat. Catch up on old times.’

O’Neill knew Morgan from his uniform days in Antrim Road. He explained it to the uniform who handed him over.

‘Let’s play a game, Janty,’ O’Neill said, steering the unmarked Mondeo into the Belfast traffic. ‘I feel like a game. What about you?’

Silence.

‘Kearney?’

‘Sure,’ Kearney answered, playing along, though he’d no idea where O’Neill was going with it.

In the back, the eighteen year old stared out the window. He was giving nothing away, playing it cool. Not easy with your hands cuffed behind your back. Janty had been on the PSNI radar since he was thirteen. He had what they called pedigree – a scumbag from a long line of scumbags. The da was a scumbag, the brother was a scumbag. Now it was Janty’s turn.

O’Neill shouted over his shoulder, ‘Hey, Janty. You like games. Don’t you, big lad?’

In the back Janty mouthed to himself, ‘Fucking peelers.’

‘OK. It’s
I spy
today. Janty, you ready in the back there?’

No reaction.

‘I spy,’ O’Neill began, ‘with my little eye, something beginning with P.’

Kearney roused some fake enthusiasm. ‘Police?’

‘No.’

‘A prick?’ The other detective laughed, thumbing towards Morgan in the back.

‘No.’

Kearney paused. ‘I give up.’

‘Prison,’ O’Neill announced triumphantly, forcing a laugh.

‘Shit. I should have got that,’ Kearney said, faking disappointment.

‘That’s right, Janty.’ O’Neill knew he was talking to himself, but he kept up the performance. ‘You can call me Mystic Meg from now on. HMP. Her Majesty’s Prison. On its way for you, son. We might as well take you to Maghaberry right now. Save us all a load of paperwork. How many years do you fancy? I’ll make you a deal right now.’

Janty Morgan slouched further into the back seat, his eyes narrowing.

‘That’s right, Detective,’ O’Neill continued. ‘Swipe a lady’s handbag. Not too bad. But you better hope she doesn’t grab you. You may have to smack her a few times, just to get away. I mean, hey,
she
grabbed
you.
Judges tend to not really go for that though. Help me with the maths here, Kearney. What does theft plus assault equal? Two years? Four? Hey Janty, you any good at maths?’

Silence.

‘No. I didn’t think so. ’Cause if you were, you’d have known better. And you know what else, Detective, whenever I am going to smack some auld doll I like to make sure she’s not the sister of anyone important – like, say, the frigging Lord Mayor.’

Janty mumbled to himself in the back, ‘Fuck sake.’

‘Oh. You didn’t know? That’s right, Janty. The Lord Mayor’s sister.’ O’Neill laughed out loud. ‘You definitely didn’t do your homework on this one, son.’

The lady had had her bag snatched in the Clifton Street car park. Truth was she only saw a blur of white tracksuit and the car park didn’t have CCTV. The attendant’s description matched Morgan. They could charge him but it wouldn’t get a conviction. Half the hoods in Belfast were wearing a white tracksuit that day. Janty had been two streets away when he saw a PSNI Land Rover and bolted. Uniform caught him but he was clean so unless they could get something out of him now, they wouldn’t sniff a charge. The PPS would take one look at it and tell them to wise up.

O’Neill kept on at Morgan. ‘Snatching a bag in broad daylight – you must be one dopey fucker. This is the twenty-first century, Janty. There’s CCTV everywhere. Did you want to be famous? Was that it? Couldn’t get on
X Factor,
so thought you’d go for
World’s Dumbest Criminals.
Obviously you don’t watch
CSI
either though, eh Janty?’

Silence.

‘That handbag will have left traces all over you. There’s all that technology now. We take you to the station, shine the blue light on you, you’re going to light up like a Christmas tree. A regular old Papa Smurf.’

O’Neill was bullshitting, trying to sow some doubt, to get beneath Morgan’s street persona.

‘By the time we get to the station though, Janty, it’s going to be all over. We’ll have you then and nothing you say then will make a bit of difference. You need to start talking, Janty. And I mean now.’

‘No comment.’ A mumble from the back.

‘Buuuurrrraghl’
O’Neill shouted, like a game-show buzzer. ‘Wrong answer.’

Janty was sticking to the golden rule. The one that stretched across the city, crossing every Peace Wall and all the old divides. From the Ballysillan to Ballymacarrett, from the New Lodge to the Short Strand – you didn’t talk to peelers.

‘Try again, Janty.’

Silence.

‘The strong silent type. That’s what I thought.’

O’Neill turned right off Millfield and steered the car up the Shankill Road. The Shankill was the heart of Protestant Belfast and had been a stronghold for Loyalist paramilitaries during the Troubles. It wasn’t the best place for a young Catholic from the New Lodge to be hanging out. O’Neill knew it, so did Janty. Almost instantly the playful atmosphere in the car started to darken. The eighteen year old got more nervous as the red, white and blue kerbstones rolled by and they got deeper into the Shankill.

‘Where the fuck are yous taking me?’

O’Neill ignored the question and continued his monologue.

‘No
comment.
Do you hear this, Kearney? This one thinks he’s some kind of criminal mastermind. Are you some kind of criminal mastermind, Janty? Is that what it is? ‘Cause that’s who
no comment
is for. Wee hoods from the New Lodge?
No comment
is not for you. Right now, commenting is the
only
thing you need to be doing. Commenting’s the only thing that’ll stop us turfing your arse out of this car in the middle of the Shankill.’

O’Neill paused, letting the situation sink in.

‘Wait a minute, Detective. I’ve got it!Janty
is
a criminal mastermind. He knows even if he gets done for this, it’ll only be another stretch in Young Offenders. He’s only seventeen, after all.’ O’Neill paused, looking in the rearview mirror. ‘You’re still only seventeen, aren’t you, Janty?’

Silence.

‘Shit. You’re eighteen? They grow up so fast these days, Ward. You’re in with the big boys now, Janty. Forget Young Offenders – all that playground stuff. This is the real McCoy. Guys from Sandy Row. Tiger’s Bay. Bet they can’t wait to get their hands on a fresh wee Fenian like you.’

Morgan’s eyes darted from side to side as they drove further into the Shankill. Union Jacks saluted from lamp-posts. The car pulled up at a set of traffic-lights beneath a large mural. A 20-foot masked gunman stared into the car. During the seventies this was the home of the Shankill Butchers, a loyalist gang that used a black taxi to abduct Catholics. They drove them outside the city and decapitated them with a meat cleaver. There was a certain mythical edge to the Shankill.

‘You stole that purse, didn’t you, Janty?’

Hesitation. ‘No comment.’

O’Neill was getting close. He could feel it.

He sighed in mock resignation. He slowed the car and pulled over. On the opposite side of the street the Regal Bar stood between a Sean Graham bookmakers and an off-licence. Black paint flaked off the walls. Four men stood outside smoking. Half-drunk pints sat along the window-ledge. They clocked the car as soon as it pulled up and started glaring across. Janty could feel their eyes boring into the car.

‘OK, Janty. If you don’t want to talk we’ll just have to let you go.’ O’Neill reached back and opened the rear door of the Mondeo.

‘I’m not fucking going anywhere.’ His voice was almost a yelp.

‘Come on, Janty. Wise up. Sure you’ll be halfway down the road before they get near you.’

The group outside the pub saw the door open and became more agitated. One man ducked back inside. The Troubles weren’t so long gone that three men in an unknown car didn’t reek of something.

‘You see, Janty, it’s like that Van Morrison song. Things have changed. We don’t beat people up any more. We just talk to you and if you don’t want to talk, we let you go.’ O’Neill sang to himself, laughing. ‘Did your mama not tell you, there’d be days like this?’

The gang outside the pub had been joined by two more men, both of whom had tattooed forearms. The drinkers were gesturing towards the car, explaining the situation.

O’Neill leaned back and shouted out of Janty’s door: ‘Orange bastards!’

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Morgan said. High-pitched. Desperate.

The gang of men started making their way across the street towards the car.

‘Ah, don’t worry about us, Janty. They might drag you out of the back, but we’ll get away OK.’

The men picked their way through the traffic, stopping cars, getting nearer the Mondeo. Janty had backed up across the seat, as far from the open door as possible. A tattooed arm reached into the car, trying to grab hold of his feet.

‘All right! All right! It was me. I done her,’ he screamed, kicking out at the hands.

O’Neill lifted the clutch, peeling rubber as the Mondeo shot off down the road. The car left an empty space that the rest of the men seemed to tumble into.

Two years later, thumbing through the file, O’Neill wished Laganview was that easy. There was no one he could lean on. No one to apply a bit of pressure to. Hell, he didn’t even have a name.

He walked into the coffee room and poured himself the third cup of the day. It was still only 8.30 a.m.

In the office next door DI Ward hunted through the bottom drawer of a steel filing cabinet. He pulled out a series of black notebooks, the ones he’d used in the eighties, back when he was in uniform.

He was looking for William Spender, the developer at Laganview. He knew he was in there somewhere. It was a complaint; although nothing ever came of it. Ward had been sent to interview him over allegations that he had threatened one of his neighbours. Something to do with an extension.

The investigation had been dropped. Out of nowhere, the neighbour retracted the complaint. Ward sat at his desk, thumbing through old notebooks, trying not to get sidetracked by the names and memories that leered out of the pages.

Next door, O’Neill continued to circle Laganview. The more he looked at the file, the less he believed it was a straight-up punishment beating. Punishment beatings were a warning, a signal that drug dealing wasn’t tolerated. A dead body was one way. Better though was a living, breathing victim. A daily testimony, in 3-D Technicolor. If the young ones saw their mate hobbling round on a pair of walking sticks, taking painkillers for the rest of his life, they would know what was coming to them. A punishment beating was about control. A way of making sure the hoods knew who was in charge. If you were dealing for someone and thought about ripping him off, there were going to be consequences. It wasn’t a crime of passion. Things didn’t get out of hand. O’Neill heard of incidents where they even called the ambulance, waiting until they heard the sirens before doing the guy’s knees.