Gun Street Girl (25 page)

“Nothing can move in and out of here without you knowing about it?” I reiterated.

“That's right.”

“What about at night? After dark, after the plant's closed.”

He shook his head. “Dubious. You'd have to know exactly where the crates were, you'd have to somehow ship them out without the proper equipment, past half a dozen different security guards into the middle of Belfast. Without any alarms getting tripped or anyone ever seeing it. No way.”

“So if they didn't steal the missiles at night, they would have had to do it during the day and you're saying that's impossible because your men weren't involved.”

“No such work order was issued. Simple as that.”

“So how do you explain this whole scandal, then?” I asked.

“Management screw-up.”

“That's all there is to it?”

“Yes. Everybody on the shop floor here goes through a six-year apprenticeship scheme. One of the longest in the world. But the managers? Those blooming idiots? They just hire them right out of university. They don't know anything. Yampy cobs, the lot of them. My men have to teach them on the job.”

“So you don't think this is serious?” I asked.

“Oh, it's serious all right! Thatcher is just looking for an opportunity to close us down. Save a few million from the Treasury purse and turf thousands of men on the dole. Butcher us like they did with Harland and Wolff and what they're doing on the Clyde. Ever been to Germany?”

“No, I can't say that—”

“The Germans support their shipyards and heavy industry. They've got the right idea. When all the British yards will have closed the only people left in the world to build warships and cruise ships and tankers will be the Germans and the South Koreans. We can't all be bloody stockbrokers, can we! This country has to make things, you know? We can't all be on the government shilling like you, Inspector Duffy, and you, Chief Inspector McCreen. Oh, it's serious all right, Inspector Duffy. If Shorts goes that's it for Belfast. First Harland and Wolff, and then DeLorean, and us too? The city will be finished!”

“You're not suggesting a conspiracy, are you, Mr. Moony?”

He smiled. “Nah, not a conspiracy, just a common or garden management screw-up.”

“Tell me about your brother and your uncle, Mr. Moony,” I said, changing tack.

His eyes darkened. “What about them?”

“Players. Your brother's doing twenty years. Your uncle is a UFF commander.”

He nodded and looked at McCreen. “Special Branch tell you that, did they?”

“It's common knowledge,” I said.

“Well, that's them and they're family and I love them. But it's not me. Look up my charge sheet. Clean.”

“It's also common knowledge you were a UFF iceman in the seventies. One of the best, every—”

Moony was on his feet. “That's enough!” he said angrily. “What you're saying is slander. Slander on my reputation. Guilt by association. I never did anything like that.”

“Your knuckles tell a different story,” I said.

He ran his hand over his bald head.

“When I was a very young man, innocent Protestants were being murdered every day by the IRA and the police were doing nothing to stop it. I did join the UDA and the UFF to protect our streets—1968, inspector, a long, long time ago. We'd just moved here as a family. I didn't know any better. I am a very different man now. I have been born again in the Blood of Christ, Inspector Duffy. I was saved by the Reverend Graham in person, Villa Park, Birmingham, July 7, 1984. I'm a family man. I have two boys and a girl. I know Jonty is doing life for murder. And Toby, well, I'm not going to talk about him in front of police officers, but Toby has, shall we say, chosen the path of violence. But that's not me.”

It was a convincing speech. In fact the whole spiel was convincing. When he got breathy and worked up he sounded like Enoch Powell, another lad from the Midlands whose strange stars had taken him to darkest Ulster.

I looked at Lawson and Crabbie to see whether they had anything.

Crabbie asked him about the timeline and Moony claimed to have an alibi for the night of the Kelly murders, for Sylvie's death, and for the night Michael went off the cliff. He was at home with his family. They would all vouch for him. Wife, four kids.

“So the first murder would have been on the night of November 11, 1985,” I reiterated.

“Home watching the box. The eleventh of the eleventh . . . always a good war film on the TV.”

“Remember the film?”

“
The Great Escape
.”

“And the evening of November twelfth?”

“Work and then home with the family. I don't go out much. Not on a weeknight. Call up the missus and ask her.”

“And November nineteenth?”

“Same deal.”

We thanked Mr. Moony for his time and drove back to Carrick RUC.

I looked in the Moony family RUC files and I did a quick newspaper index search on whether Billy Graham had indeed come to England in 1984. He had. Everything Moony said checked out. We called up his wife to check on the alibi, and as we suspected she backed her husband all the way.

All five of us went down to Ownies Bar, where the food was good and the black stuff was the best in County Antrim.

“What did you think of Moony?” Spencer asked me over my second pint.

“I thought he was sincere,” I said.

Spencer and McCreen laughed bitterly. “He's got you fooled as well, then, I see,” McCreen said. “Special Branch intel says he's a player. Big-time player.”

“But he found God,” Crabbie said. “The Reverend Billy Graham himself. At Villa Park. I looked it up. Cliff Richard sang that day.”

“Is this the same Reverend Graham who told President Nixon he was doing the Lord's work when he bombed the shit out of the Chinks?” Spencer said.

“I think you mean the Vietnamese,” Lawson said.

“Chinks, Slopes, what's the difference? Point is, I don't believe this phony God number, and I don't believe his bullshit about the work orders, or that he's clear of the UFF.”

Spencer looked at McCreen and some secret communication seemed to pass between them.

“I mean, maybe there are no stolen missiles,” Spencer continued. “But if there are he's in on the scheme up to his fucking neck.”

“So you've Moony under tight surveillance too?” I asked.

“We might have,” McCreen said cagily.

“I'm asking because you might be able to verify the alibis of both Vardon and Moony.”

McCreen shook his head. “We can't do that. We only got approval for a full-time surveillance operation seventy-two hours ago. Bureaucracy/limited resources, you know how it works.”

“But let us assure you, Inspector Duffy, if either Vardon or Moony make a move in the next couple of weeks, we'll know about it and you'll know about it,” Spencer said.

“Phone taps?” I asked.

“We're not supposed to tell you,” McCreen said. “But I assure you that if either of them mentions anything pertaining to your investigation we will let you know.”

I smiled. “See, this is what I like. Special Branch and CID working together.”

McCreen stood up to get the next round in. “Sorry about that Fenian crack earlier, really, no offense meant, you know? I actually heard you were a good peeler.”

“No offense taken.”

Another round.

And another.

Beers. Whiskey. Ciggies.

Improvised pub crawl through Carrick in the drizzle. The Dobbins Inn. The Central Bar. The North Gate. The Borough Arms. The Railway Tavern. The latter three sour, vinegary, paramilitary pubs, filled with dour men in denim jackets looking for trouble but knowing they were out of their depth with the five of us.

Home through the rain to Coronation Road.

Telly, a can of Bass, a late-night call to Kate.

“Sean? Is there anything wrong?”

“Sorry I snapped at you.”

“It's OK. Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. I just got worked up. You know? The Tories. That guy in Conservative Central Office rubbed me the wrong way. Bloody Thatcher closing down all the bloody factories. The Germans are still building ships, aren't they?” I said, slurring my words a little.

“Uhm, look, Sean, I think maybe you've had a little too much to drink.”

“I have. I just wanted to apologize. Apologize for everything. I saved her. I saved her and now look what she's doing.”

“Are you talking about Mrs. Thatcher? Sean, you've signed the Official Secrets Act; you're not supposed to—”

“Sara wants to get to the real Sean Duffy? Who is the real Sean Duffy? What if there is no real Sean Duffy, eh?”

“Sean, look, it's a quarter to one . . .”

“Sorry, didn't realize the hour. Call you another time.”

“All right . . . Look after yourself, Sean, now, won't you?”

“I will.”

She was right. Too much booze.

Kitchen sink, dry heaves, room spins, before finally the darkness came and I fell asleep on the unjudgemental ceramic tiles of the chilly, kitchen floor.

20: IS THAT ALL THERE IS TO A FIRE?

Rain. Sleet. A grey, half-hearted dawn.

Phone bleating in the hall.

“Hello?”

“Inspector Duffy?”

“Aye.”

“This is Billy Spencer.”

“Who?”

“From yesterday. Inspector Billy Spencer. Special Branch.”

“Oh yeah. Jesus, you're up early. What's going on?”

“Someone attacked Nigel Vardon's house a couple of hours ago. Our man was parked on the road but they came over the fields so we missed the incident itself.”

“What happened?”

“Arson. Brigade boys say it was a petrol bomb.”

“Shit.”

“And someone's shot his dogs with a crossbow.”

“Where are you now?”

“We're here, but I thought you'd want to know. Now that we're all lovey-dovey and everything. Cooperation between our departments.”

“What about Moony? Where did he go last night? You've been watching him too, right?”

“We certainly have. He went home after work and didn't leave. No suspicious phone calls either. Listen, are you coming here or not? This is a good development for us. It means Vardon's pissed off somebody, somehow.”

“I'll be over.”

I called McCrabban and Lawson and filled them in. I pulled on jeans, a jumper and my leather jacket and went outside. My God it was cold.

I looked under the Beemer for bombs, didn't find any, got inside and put on the radio.

A bad night in Ulster for trouble. Riots, demonstrations, sporadic power cuts. The Reverend Ian Paisley, MP, MEP, had held a torch-lit rally at the top of Slemish Mountain telling a crowd of concerned local farmers and excited British journalists that a deal had been struck between Mrs. Thatcher and Satan himself to sell out the good honest people of Ulster. Paisley called for a general strike, noncooperation with the police, and the setting up of a “Third Force” of licensed gun owners who could police Protestant districts instead of the RUC. It wasn't subtle. It was overcooked. It reeked of melodrama. But in Northern Ireland there wasn't much emotional space for subtlety or nuance.

Dolly shot along the seafront. Me in the BMW, grim faced, window wipers on max, listening to all this on the radio.

Up the Tongue Loanen Road toward Ballycarry.

Nigel Vardon's house.

Ex-house.

The fire had brought out a few locals and a journo or two. I met Crabbie and Lawson and DI Spencer, and I talked to the mustachioed, grim-faced fire inspector. Arson, yes. Most definitely. A petrol bomb chucked onto the back porch.

I went and had a chat with the crack Special Branch surveillance team, who hadn't exactly done a quality job here, but the pair of them sitting in a car on the Tongue Loanen Road hadn't seen anyone approach the house.

I examined the two dead Alsatian dogs.

“Who kills a dog?” Crabbie said, visibly upset.

Nigel was sitting in a fire engine cab with a blanket around his shoulders and a cup of tea in his hands.

“Let's talk to him, see what he has to say,” I said to the lads.

“Our case, Duffy, I'll do the talking,” Spencer said.

“How about we both do the talking?” I suggested.

“OK.”

“Mr. Vardon?”

“Yes?”

“Do you remember me? Inspector Duffy, Carrick RUC? We talked the other day. This is DI Spencer from Special Branch whom I think you already know.”

“I remember both of youse.”

“You want to tell us what happened here tonight?” Spencer asked.

“Someone tried to burn me out. That's all I know.”

“You must have an idea about who did this.”

He didn't reply.

“Come on, Mr. Vardon, if you help us, we'll help you catch these people,” I said.

He looked at me with contempt. “You? You'll catch these people? How are you going to do that?”

“If you help us, we can do it,” Spencer insisted.

“No thanks.”

“You're refusing to cooperate?” I asked.

“I am cooperating. I just don't know anything. OK?”

“You must have some idea. Enemies. Threatening letters? Phone calls?”

“They killed my dogs!”

“I see that. Tell us who might have done it,” I said.

“Well, if it wasn't . . . look, I don't know. Your man Lawrence one field over said my dogs were always worrying his sheep . . . Maybe him?”

“What's his name?”

“Sam Lawrence. That's his house over there. On the other side of the stream.”

“You think this bloke Lawrence did this because your dogs were worrying his sheep? Bit excessive, no?”

“Look. Fuck off. OK? I have no idea. Why don't you question him and leave me the fuck alone.”