A Box Full of Darkness (Wilson Book 5) (16 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Wilson woke with a start. He could hear a phone ringing but it was somewhere in the distance. He looked quickly at his watch. It was just after 1 am. He quickly rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and went to find the phone. It was the first call he’d had at the new apartment, and he was slightly disorientated. Finally, he found the phone, and lifted the handset. He could tell it was Jock McDevitt at the other end of the line, but he couldn’t understand a word he was saying. It sounded like Jock was speaking with a couple of large marbles in his mouth.

‘Steady, Jock,’ he said. ‘Speak slowly, I can’t understand you.’

There was another outbreak of garbled conversation from McDevitt. Wilson heard the word royal and hospital in different sentences. Eventually, McDevitt stopped, and there was a gap.

‘Superintendent Wilson?’ the voice was authoritative and calm.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re a friend of Mr McDevitt?’

‘Yes.’

‘My name is Doctor Crean. I’m the consultant in charge of A and E at the Royal Victoria. Your friend arrived here in some level of distress this evening. He has some facial injuries, which appear to have been inflicted in some sort of fight. We have been insisting that he call the police but he requested to speak with you first. I think it would be advisable if you came to the hospital. Mr McDevitt is being somewhat difficult.’

‘Keep him there. I’m on my way.’

Wilson arrived in the car park of the Royal Victoria ten minutes after he received the phone call. He ran up the steps leading to the A and E Department, and went immediately past the reception area into the cubicles at the rear. A porter tried to stop him, and he flashed his warrant card as he brushed past the outstretched arm.

‘McDevitt?’ he asked the first nurse he met.

‘Are you his friend?’

Wilson nodded.

‘The last cubicle on the left.’ She hustled off quickly.

Wilson pulled back the plastic curtain on the last cubicle, and saw Jock McDevitt lying on his back on a bed. He had a large ice pack over the side of his face. His eyes were closed, and Wilson could see bruising and a red streak under his left eye. Someone had worked him over, but that someone had been careful not to do too much damage. On a scale of one to ten, McDevitt received a beating somewhere between two and three. Wilson would have to see the ice pack removed to determine the exact level. From what he could see, it was sore but no real damage was done.

McDevitt opened his eyes as Wilson entered. ‘About bloody time,’ the words were delivered slowly, and as distinctly as the bruising on McDevitt’s jaw would allow. It sounded like he had received a major shot of novocaine.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll live.’ Wilson pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘What happened?’

It took over a half an hour for McDevitt to relate his ordeal. The story unfolded slowly, and with a certain degree of wincing as each word was pronounced.

‘Very professional,’ Wilson said as soon as he had extracted most of the story from McDevitt. ‘I mean the guy who worked you over. Tomorrow, I want you to write down everything you remember about the guys that lifted you. Not just the stuff about their size, or the colour of their balaclavas, but what they wore, how they sounded, how they smelled. Everything that you can remember. Right now, I can tell you that if they had really wanted to hurt you, they would have. This was just a message. Your doctor was right about the police report. You never know when you might need a paper trail.  After you write out everything for me, we’ll make a copy and you can file a police report.’

McDevitt shook his head. ‘No report,’ he said.

The curtain moved again and a young Asian doctor entered the cubicle. ‘Superintendent Wilson?’

Wilson nodded. ‘Doctor Crean?’

‘No, Doctor Crean is the consultant. I am Doctor Ashok. Mr McDevitt has had a very shocking experience. However, he is not badly hurt. His jaw is not broken, just badly bruised. He will be perfectly well in several days as long as he continues to apply the ice pack.’ He handed Wilson an envelope. ‘This contains a discharge paper and a prescription for a mild painkiller. I have included several tablets to help him through the night. It is important to take the painkillers over the next few days. He can keep the tee-shirt and training bottoms, but since they are mine, I would appreciate it if he could return them to me as soon as possible.’

‘Where are his own clothes?’ Wilson asked.

The young doctor looked down. ‘We have them bagged outside, they are not in a condition to be worn.’

Wilson looked at McDevitt who was looking sheepish. Wilson hadn’t thought anything about his attire. He could see that McDevitt had decided to leave some details out of his story. He took the letter from the doctor. ‘Thank you, doctor. I’ll take care of him.’

‘Please, we need the bed for another patient. If he has any further problems, he should see his GP.’ Dr Ashok hurried away.

Wilson turned and extended his hand to McDevitt who took it. He pulled the journalist upright, and McDevitt climbed off the bed. He continued to hold the ice pack to his injured jaw.

They left the cubicle and Wilson saw that a closed plastic bag had been left strategically in their path. He picked it up and handed it to McDevitt. ‘When you write your account of last night’s happening, I’d be grateful if you’d include all the details.’

McDevitt shook his head, and took the plastic bag holding it at arm’s length. Both men laughed and McDevitt winced. ‘Not a laughing matter,’ he said when he finally composed himself.

‘No,’ Wilson said taking his arm and leading him towards the exit to the reception area. ‘Not a laughing matter at all.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Wilson drove to McDevitt’s house in Agincourt Avenue. He parked directly in front and helped the injured man into the house. He gave McDevitt two painkillers and managed to get him into bed. McDevitt was asleep before Wilson left the room. The adrenaline had drained from McDevitt’s body, and the wave of exhaustion finally overwhelmed him. In the morning, he would have the worst headache of his life as the full effect of the swollen jaw kicked in. He emptied the plastic bag of clothes into the bath and showered them with cold water. He managed to get most of the excrement down the plughole, and left the clothes steeping in cold water. He felt sorry for McDevitt.  By some unwritten rule journalists seldom ended up being the victims of crime. A notable exception was dealing with Islamic State. So maybe McDevitt had been unlucky. Wilson went to the kitchen. His host had a wide selection of teas, and he helped himself to a cup of Camomile. He was tired and decided it wasn’t worth heading back to Queen’s Quay. The couch looked comfortable. He liked McDevitt’s house despite its appearance of being a man cave. It was exactly the kind of place that he could see himself living in. He sat down on the couch. He hadn’t been through anything like the same trauma as McDevitt but he was more tired than he could remember. There were too many issues flooding his mind. He would have to add looking after McDevitt to the list. Jock had put himself on the line by looking into Sinclair and Jackson, and he’d been given the treatment for his trouble. Wilson realised that he had already accepted that he was the cause of what happened to McDevitt. That might mean that it was Sinclair and Jackson themselves who had dealt with McDevitt. He might be wrong but he could see Jackson as the type who might relish dishing out punishment. He would have a better idea when he read McDevitt’s full account. He drank his tea slowly running over the possibilities in his mind. Every time he came back to Sinclair and Jackson aided and abetted by one of their old pals from Special Branch. Unless McDevitt was involved in something else, he was being punished for asking questions about them. That seemed a bit harsh to him. What if the beating and humiliation wasn’t just a message to McDevitt, but to him as well? He was beginning to feel angry. It wasn’t a positive emotion, and it wasn’t an emotion that would contribute to the solution as to who murdered Mallon and Lafferty, and why they had done it. He finished his tea and lay down on the couch. He wanted terribly to sleep but his mind was active. He would have to throw away his strategy for investigating the deaths of the two young men. He would have to look at an alternative approach. But what it was, he had no idea. He was running through possibilities when he finally drifted to sleep.

Wilson wasn’t exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when he entered the office in Dunmurry the following morning. As anticipated, McDevitt had woken up with the mother-of-all-headaches and was busy swallowing painkillers when Wilson left. Since the Cummerford trial was reaching its conclusion, McDevitt wasn’t in the position to take a day off. Wilson arrived at Dunmurry carrying the two thick files that Reid had procured for him. The amount of evidence he had already collected was impressive but it didn’t help him to answer the vital questions he had developed. The strategy he had been working on was out the window. He couldn’t ask either Kate or McDevitt for their help. That left him with Stephanie Reid as his only ally. And she had already fulfilled her purpose. Not for the first time, he found himself ready to call time on the investigation. He could write a damning report on the RUC investigation and leave behind a file with considerably more evidence for someone else to carry forward. He supposed that he could follow such a course of action, but he was damned if he was going to. He had made a promise to Michael Lafferty he intended to keep and it wasn’t in his DNA to give up until the final whistle was blown. There was a tap on the office door and Sinclair entered.

“You’re looking a bit the worse for wear this morning,’ he said sitting in Wilson’s visitor chair.

‘Hard night,’ Wilson said simply. He was looking directly into Sinclair’s face searching for a ‘tell’. He was certain that if Jackson and Sinclair were not directly responsible for McDevitt’s ordeal, they knew who was.

Sinclair’s face was an impassive mask. ‘Do tell.’

‘Someone lifted Jock McDevitt last night and threw a scare into him. He ended up in the Royal Victoria and called on me to pick him up.’

‘Poor old Jock.’ A smile played along Sinclair’s lips. ‘I didn’t know you were such good friends.’

Wilson thought he could see something more in the smile than straightforward amusement. ‘Jock doesn’t have many friends. We’re more acquaintances.’

‘Still, you’re the one he turned to. Must have been distressing for him. He should report it.’

‘He’s going to. They lifted him in a black cab from right outside the
Chronicle’s
office in Royal Avenue. That took a bit of balls. I think someone was making it look like either a new IRA or UDA operation. Unfortunately, Jock isn’t working on a story involving either organisation so that theory doesn’t hold water.’

‘Something in the past, perhaps.’ The smile flitted across his lips again.

‘Perhaps. There’s a chance someone caught the number of the cab. There are so many CCTV cameras in the city, it’ll have been picked up.’

‘Jock alright, is he?’

‘His jaw won’t be fully operational for a few days,’ Wilson said watching for a response from Sinclair. ‘But, at least, he won’t be taking his meals through a straw for a month. I’d say whoever lifted him knew what they were doing.’

‘Nasty blokes the IRA and UDA.’ The smile was still there but dimmed.

Wilson made a mental note to call Peter Davidson as soon as Sinclair was out of the office.

‘Any progress on the Mallon and Lafferty killings?’ Sinclair asked. He was looking directly at the files on Wilson’s desk.

‘Not quite,’ said Wilson picking up the two pocket files. ‘These are the autopsy files.’ He opened them and took out the contents. ‘Strange that neither of them made their way into the RUC file. It seems that our old friend, Sergeant Ramsey, attended both autopsies. There’s a note in the file to the effect that the bullets taken from the bodies were handed to the RUC officer attending. A lot of evidence appears to have disappeared in this case. And most of what disappeared did so through the good offices of Ramsey.’

‘Anything else from the autopsies?’

Wilson decided a white lie was in order. ‘A cordite test on the hands of the two dead boys was negative. They hadn’t been handling weapons. The firing had been in one direction only.’

‘Interesting,’ Sinclair shifted position in the chair. ‘But that doesn’t seem to get us any further.’

‘I think I’ll have another go at Sergeant Ramsey. There are far too many mentions of him in connection with these murders. I think he has a lot more he could tell us. In the meantime, I think I’ll get Jackson to do a report on the various murder gangs that were active at the time of the shooting.’

‘That will certainly make him happy. He can get on it as soon as you’ve finished the second interview with Ramsey.’

‘I think I’ll question Ramsey alone this time.’

Sinclair stood. He didn’t look very pleased. ‘It’s your call although, it’s not strictly in line with procedures. You should take Jackson along. We certainly wouldn’t want you injured or anything.’

‘I think I’m a different proposition to McDevitt.’

‘Yes, I’m quite sure you are. Give my best to your friend. Wish him a speedy recovery.’

Wilson watched Sinclair leave the office. He wondered whether he’d come to gloat over McDevitt. He thought that perhaps he had. At least he had stuck a pin in Sinclair’s balloon with the information on the autopsy.