A Box Full of Darkness (Wilson Book 5) (25 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Dinner was a strained affair. It was like two former best friends meeting after twenty years at a college reunion. Wilson was no longer the young man his mother had known, and Victoria Anderson was no longer his mythical mother but a flesh-and-blood older lady. For two hours they brought each other up-to-date. The elephant in the room was John Wilson who was not mentioned at the dinner table. After dinner, Victoria brought out the scrapbooks and she and Wilson went through every page. He relived the rugby games and regaled them with humorous stories that he often used in speeches. He had less pleasure poring over some of the cases he had been involved in. Victoria and Greg Anderson had put Belfast and its associated problems behind them, and Wilson could see that his mother had difficulty casting her mind back to those days. He may have been wrong but he felt there was something more to it than an aversion to violence. He felt there was a slight opening to put the real reason for his visit on the table but he decided that it was too soon. Eventually, his father’s name would come up and that would be the opportunity he was waiting for. His mother’s stamina began to wane when the clock struck eleven and she made her excuses and headed off to bed. As soon as she had retired, Anderson went to a corner cabinet and returned with two glasses and a bottle of Jameson. He poured a healthy measure into each glass and put the bottle away. ‘That far and no further,’ he said looking at the glass. ‘That’s what my old father used to say.’

‘He was a wise man,’ Wilson said lifting his glass and sipping the golden liquid.

‘You funked it,’ Anderson said tasting his whiskey.

‘There wasn’t an opening.’

‘His name never gets mentioned here. You’re going to have to do the heavy lifting. She’s a big girl. She can take the discussion you want to have. But you’re going to have to come clean on what really brought you here. There may be a little hurt in that.’

‘Has she been diagnosed?’

‘Yes, Parkinson’s, how did you know?’

‘Remember, I’m a detective. The tremors, the slowness of movement, I guessed it was the onset of Parkinson’s. What’s the prognosis?’

‘She’ll be alright for ten years, maybe.’

Wilson took a large drink of whiskey. It was long enough for make-up but not long enough to assuage the guilt for the lost years. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired. ‘I need to sleep.’

‘When are you leaving?’

‘Tomorrow. I left Belfast without telling anyone. They’ll be sending out dogs to look for me soon.’

‘Good luck.’ Greg downed his whiskey.

Wilson slept fitfully. The events in Beechmount Parade played on his mind’s movie projector and the face in the window of the car was that of his father. That would always be the case unless he found out the truth. His flight for Montreal left at 2 pm, which meant that he only had the morning with his mother. He was already awake when he got the smell of freshly brewed coffee from the kitchen. He showered and dressed quickly. His mother was alone in the kitchen when he entered. He moved behind her and held her. It felt so damn good and comforting. How had he ever thought that he could get through this life without his mother?

She turned and faced him, tears in her eyes. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’ She allowed herself to be hugged.

‘I have to leave today but I’m coming back soon. Maybe sooner than you think.’

‘I’ll count the days.’

‘Where’s Greg?’

‘He’s out on a job. Must be urgent because as of yesterday I hadn’t heard about it.’ She moved out of his arms. ‘You like eggs Benedict? I make my own muffins and hollandaise sauce.’

‘Sounds wonderful.’

‘Sit down and talk to me while I cook.’ She poured him a cup of coffee from a Perspex pot. Then she set about poaching some eggs. ‘I know Greg better than any man in the world and he has no damn job today. He’s got himself out of here because he wants us to be alone. He knows something that I don’t?’

‘I came here because I need something from you.’

‘Whatever I can give, you’ve got it.’

‘You may not think that way when you hear the whole story.’

She put two plates on the table. Each had an open toasted muffin with two poached eggs topped with a dollop of hollandaise sauce. Then she sat facing him. ‘I’m not as fragile as I look.’ She slashed one of her eggs with her knife and the yoke spread over the muffin. ‘I’ve already proved that I’m a survivor. Put whatever you’re holding inside on the table.’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘We’ve got time.’

They were on their second cup of coffee by the time Wilson got to the point where he had Dixon’s information. Victoria had already cleared the plates and they sat facing each other across the dining table. Both could almost feel the ghost of John Wilson sitting in one of the empty chairs.

‘You and your father had a special bond,’ Victoria said when Wilson finished his story. ‘I never quite understood why he concentrated so much on you. Probably something missing in his own childhood. The Wilsons were a funny breed. They were hard men. Your grandfather was a tyrant who made his wife and John’s lives hell. There was a lot of the old man in John. With you his showed his soft side.’

Wilson smiled. He remembered the punishing physical training sessions his father put him through. ‘If that was his soft side, I wouldn’t like to see the hard side.’

She smiled. ‘It was well that you didn’t. There was no grey with your father. Everything was black and white. You were either with him or against him. And in his latter days it seemed that everything was against him.’

‘Did he leave a suicide note? There was nothing in the shed. I know, because I searched before the police arrived.’

She picked up her coffee and her hand shook as she brought it to her lips.

He didn’t think that the shaking was Parkinson’s. There was a suicide note. But she wasn’t about to hand it over easily. ‘You still have it?’

‘There was no note.’

Wilson leaned his hands across the table and took her hands in his. ‘We need to rebuild our relationship. And we need to rebuild it on honesty and trust. If there’s some explanation for my father’s suicide, I need to know it.’

‘There are things that you need to understand first.’ She removed her hands from his, finished her coffee and poured a fresh cup. ‘The 1970s and 80s were terrible times in Ulster. There were the bombs and the shootings. It looked like the Province was going to hell. People were doing things that they would never conceive of normally. John really cared about law and order. And he hated what the IRA was doing. He became pathological about that hatred. And he wasn’t alone. There were groups in every RUC station who saw the IRA as a threat to life in Ulster. Many of those groups felt that they were the law and they took things into their own hands. John was always a difficult man. When you came along his spirits began to lift a bit. The only times he smiled were when he was with you. He doted on you. But he still had fits of depression. You were too young to remember. As he got older, he became more withdrawn and the depression more frequent. I tried to help but he wouldn’t let me in to whatever was bothering him. We stopped having relations with each other.’ She blushed and drank coffee to cover it. ‘This is hard for me. I knew that you idolised him and we had a tacit agreement that we wouldn’t involve you in the disintegration of our relationship. That’s why he built that damn potting shed. It was somewhere he could go and hide. In 1990, I met Greg and I found someone with the gentle soul that I once saw in your father.’ She stopped speaking and sat quietly for a few minutes. ‘I don’t know if John ever found out about Greg and me. We were discreet. We never met in Lisburn. We always sought the anonymity of Belfast. I don’t think he would have cared even if he had known. We were strangers to each other by then. I was with Greg in Belfast the evening that John died. It pains me to think of him sitting alone in his shed with his service revolver contemplating his death while I was laughing with my lover. When I got home and found the house full of John’s colleagues, I would gladly have joined him. Despite the fact that I knew I had done nothing wrong, I felt tremendous guilt for John’s death.’ She finished her coffee and stared into her son’s face. She looked for emotion and saw only sorrow.

Wilson stood up and walked to the other side of the table. He lifted her from her seat and held her close. He was remembering the way he had railed at her when he found that she had betrayed his father with Anderson. He had been too young and immature to look beyond the few facts that he had. His reaction was impulsive and made with the part of his brain that was formed millions of years ago in Neanderthal man. ‘I wish I had been older,’ he said. ‘I wish I had taken the time to understand.’

She looked up into his face. ‘So do I.’

‘Where’s the note?’

She slowly disentangled herself from his arms and left the kitchen. When she returned she was carrying a manila envelope. She sat in the chair she had vacated and put the envelope on the table in front of her. Wilson retook his seat.

‘When I went to my bedroom,’ she started, ‘this envelope was on my pillow. There was no name on the outside but I knew instinctively what it was. It’s not a note but a letter. In some parts it’s rambling and in some parts it is intensely personal.’ She pushed the letter across to him. ‘Read it at your peril because it will change many of your perceptions.’

Wilson looked at the small envelope. He realised the danger that lay in reading it. He reached out his hand and pulled it towards him. The envelope had split along one side and had obviously been opened many times. He believed his mother. Lifting the flap he removed four handwritten pages. He placed them in front of him.

‘Don’t,’ his mother said.

Wilson lifted the pages and began to read.

His mother rose and left the room.

When she re-entered fifteen minutes later Wilson was sitting with his head in his hands. She was right. He should never have read the letter. It was written by a man who was a complete stranger to him. We seldom see what lays behind the facade that people present to the world but this was his father. He sat on this man’s knee and they spent hours at the kitchen table doing his homework. This was the man who introduced him to rugby and who rearranged his working life to attend every game he played. The man who wrote the letter was not the man he remembered. The letter was written by a fanatical Loyalist who became a murderer and betrayed his oath to protect the people. It was written by a man wracked with guilt for his part in those murders and who sought redemption. The letter was a confession by a man who felt he had failed as a police officer and a husband.

‘Are you satisfied?’ Vicky Anderson retook her seat. ‘Will you sleep better knowing what you know now?’

‘You should have shown me this twenty years ago.’

‘And destroy the memory of the man you idolised. I made the decision not to do that.’

‘At what bloody cost?’

‘When I did it, I had no idea of the price both of us would have to pay. If I had known, I would have read it out to you line by line and explained as we went.’

Wilson was beginning to appreciate the sacrifice that his mother had made. She allowed him to believe that her infidelity was the reason his father committed suicide. That decision had cost them twenty years of separation. He folded the letter and put it back in the battered envelope. ‘Do you mind if I keep this?’

‘I don’t need it any more. I know it word for word.’

He slipped the envelope into his pocket. He had reached his final destination on the Lafferty and Mallon killings. He knew the why and the who and that was his job. He thought of the futility of it all. Two young men had been murdered in order to bring the IRA out onto the streets. In the process the one man he admired the most turned out to be a murderer. He looked around the room and saw his mother staring at him.

‘We have to cast off the past, Ian. None of us know what the future is going to bring. So, we have to concentrate on the here and now. I have never felt so much joy as I have in the past day. I’ve rediscovered my son who I love more than anything in the world. I want to hold on to that. We all make mistakes and I’ve made my fair share. Holding back the letter was the one that cost me the most.’ She stood up. ‘I don’t want you to spend your last few hours here talking about the past. I want you to take me for a walk by the harbour. I want my fine son to link my arm as we walk along and I want us to laugh. We had enough of heartache. Let the dead bury the dead.’

Wilson smiled. He always thought that he was his father’s creature. He now hoped that there was more of his mother in him. He had lost something that had been very dear to him but in its place he had discovered something that would take its place.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Wilson arrived back at Belfast International at five o’clock the following evening. His mother and stepfather insisted on travelling with him to Halifax to say what she called a “proper goodbye”. The pain of separation was assuaged by his commitment to return for a longer visit at the earliest opportunity. There was a lot of time to make up. The sun was shining as he left the terminal and made his way to the car park. He had read his father’s final letter several times on the plane and maybe because of that sleep had eluded him.  His body and his mind both craved rest but there was something that he had to do before he could lay his head on the pillow of his bed in Queen’s Quay. He retrieved his car, tossed his overnight bag into the boot, and drove out onto the A26. Thirty minutes later he pulled up outside Michael Lafferty’s house in Beechmount Parade. He sat in the car for several minutes composing himself. Then he climbed out, went to the front door and knocked.

‘Superintendent,’ Mrs Lafferty’s voice showed surprise.

‘Is Michael able to receive visitors?’ he asked.

She opened the door wider. ‘He’s right poorly, but I suppose it’s important.’

‘I made a promise, Mrs Lafferty. I’m here to fulfil it if I can.’

‘Come you in, Superintendent.’ She ushered him into the small hall. ‘He’s in and out of consciousness. The doctor says it’s any hour now.’ She pushed open the door to Michael Lafferty’s room.

Wilson entered the room, which was in semi-darkness. The smell of death was already present and he imagined the Grim Reaper hiding in one of the dark corners waiting anxiously to do his work. Michael Lafferty’s head was propped up on two pillows, his eyes half-closed. His face had already taken on the pallor of a corpse.

Mrs Lafferty motioned to a chair set against the left side of the bed. ‘Will you take a cup of tea, Superintendent?’

‘That’s very kind of you.’ He moved slowly across the room and sat in the chair she indicated.

Michael Lafferty moved his head to the right and his eyes opened. ‘Superintendent Wilson.’ His voice was a weak croak.

‘I’ve come to fulfil my promise, Michael.’

Lafferty smiled through parched lips.

When Mrs Lafferty returned to the room bearing a cup of tea she saw the two men were holding hands. Michael lay back on the pillows with his eyes closed, a look of serenity on his face that she hadn’t seen in a long time. She offered the cup to Wilson. He noticed a single Marietta biscuit perched precariously on the saucer. He motioned her to place the cup on a chair close to his. As soon as she did, he stood up and ushered her into the chair he had vacated. He took the woman’s hand and removing Michael’s hand from his, he put it in his wife’s hand. Then he turned and started walking to the door.

‘Thank you,’ Mrs Lafferty said as he disappeared through the open doorway.