Anglo-Irish Murders (17 page)

Shouts of ‘Shame, shame,’ ‘Gardaí colluders’ and ‘SS Gardaí’ echoed through the twilight. The accompanying media surrounded the demonstrators gratefully, clicking their cameras, pointing their microphones and shouting their questions. Then, as if in answer to a prayer, the heavens opened yet again and the rain came down in a deluge. As McNulty and Pooley ran for shelter the protesters and the media could be seen doing likewise. Only the police and the army were left to endure the force of the downpour.

‘Jaysus,’ said McNulty, as they shook themselves down, ‘and here’s me having to sneak out the back and go on foot to where I’m meeting this fella.’ He reached into a corner and pulled out a pair of rubber boots and a vast waterproof cape. ‘At least I’m prepared. I hope that shower get soaked.

‘You’d better get back to the hotel when I’m gone. Have a rest and a bite to eat. I’ll give you a ring the minute I’m back.’

Pooley stayed on for a few minutes, waiting until the downpour slackened. As he was about to leave, Sergeant Bradley came in and grinned at him. ‘Tell me, Rollo,’ he said, ‘did ye ever hear the one about the IRA man who was killed in a bomb blast?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘He meets St Peter at the pearly gates. “I’m Kelly of the Belfast brigade,” he says.

‘“Well, you can’t come in here so,” says St Peter. “We don’t want trouble in heaven.”

‘“I don’t want to come in,” says Kelly. “Ye’ve got ten minutes to clear the place.”’

Pooley managed a titter. Bradley laughed uproariously, picked up the kettle and filled it at the sink.

***

‘It’s just been on the news, Ellis,’ said Amiss. ‘It was a loyalist grenade, apparently. Some outfit called the Protestant Defenders, who allege they’re a splinter group of Orange Volunteers, who’re a splinter group of the Loyal Volunteer Force who’re a splinter group of the…Or am I getting confused?

‘Anyway, whoever they are, they say they executed Laochraí in revenge for Billy.’

‘But how in heaven’s name could they get access to the castle, let alone to her room?’

‘You’re the cop. Not me.’

***

‘Christ, this is a right snake-pit,’ said McNulty to Pooley. ‘First, there’s all that codology about them loyalists, which I don’t believe for a minute.’

‘You don’t think that maybe Willie Hughes or Gardiner Steeples…?’

‘Hughes is shaking like a kitten. He was frightened enough when Billy Pratt was knocked off. He’s terrified now. And it’d be pretty daft for a fellow with an explosives record to blow up someone he’d be suspected of blowing up even if he hadn’t the faintest reason to want to do it. Which he had, being as how he couldn’t stand yer woman, for all that she was so pally with Billy.

‘Anyway the RUC are convinced Willie’s clean. And as for Steeples, he hasn’t had as much as a parking fine in his life. But what I’ve got to tell you is that that Laochraí de Búrca, her with that pious mouth on her, is only a double killer—part of a team who shot two off-duty policemen. And that only a few years ago.

‘They know she did it, they had a witness, but she produced ten people to claim she was somewhere else and then didn’t the witness have a mysterious and fatal accident?

‘That’s why she goes on about police harassment so much. It’s a ploy. Lots of them do it to stop the cops following them. Any time they’re pulled up by us or the RUC or questioned about anything they plead police harassment, get in some of those gullible human rights groups to take up their case and bingo, they’re martyrs instead of unrepentant murdering villains like she was. Jaysus, but it’s an Alice-in-Wonderland world all right when you get within spitting distance of the feckin’ North.’

Pooley felt quite shocked. ‘Would Father O’Flynn have known about this?’

McNulty shrugged. ‘Who knows? If he had, no doubt he’d have excused her and her a freedom fighter and all. The fella was an eejit anyway. Would have believed anything she told him. I’d say on balance she wouldn’t have. Most of these types keep their mouths tight shut.’

‘Liam?’

‘More complicated. From what you’d call an aristocratic republican family. That means that every generation some of them end up in jail and murder people, leaving the next generation feeling guilty if they don’t do the same. It’s one of the curses of this bloody country. Normal people want to leave their kids enough money to pay off their mortgages. Our fanatics want to leave their kids a licence to kill anyone who stands in the way of a United feckin’ Ireland even if they die in the attempt. Liam’s family was like that.’

He attacked his moustache. ‘MacPhrait’s been pretty lucky, all things considered. All right he was remanded in custody a few times, but though he was certainly active and almost certainly led two bombing campaigns in England, he always got off on some technicality or other. They’ve great lawyers, these lads.’ He pulled the moustache so hard that he emitted a yelp. ‘There’s been a family split though, since this peace process stuff started, with a major falling-out a year ago. Him and his mammy took the Sinn Féin line and were in favour of doing a deal. Two of the brothers and the daddy were die-hards. Nothing short of a United socialist Ireland for them. One of the brothers is in jail now. The two of them were caught doing an armed robbery and one of them was killed when being arrested. Some say that a garda informer was responsible, others think one of the peace crowd sold them out.’

‘Could that have turned him against Laochraí and the mainstream?’

‘Anything’s possible. But the word is there’s no sign of it. He hasn’t been to see the brother and he still doesn’t see the daddy.’

‘Anything on Kelly-Mae?’

‘I’ve got lines out to the FBI. Nothing back yet. Now I’ll have to leave you to your own devices. I’ve forensic reports and all sorts to deal with. Tell you what, though, you can expect to be back behind the arras first thing tomorrow morning. If I were you, I’d have a quiet evening with your friends and get to bed early.’

As Pooley was leaving the caravan, feeling anti-climactic, McNulty called behind him. ‘Don’t forget to lock your door.’

Chapter Eighteen

‘So how are you this morning, Rollo?’

‘Much, much better, Inspector,’ said Pooley. ‘As are most people, I think. Well, more rested anyway. I saw a few of them at breakfast and they seemed calmer.’

‘Well, I suppose it was a plus that the night passed without another corpse, but that’s about all we’ve got to be pleased about. Have you seen any newspapers or heard the news?’

‘I’ve heard the news, but I haven’t seen a paper.’

‘I can stand most of it. I expected all these MOPE demands for a public enquiry. I can stand all the accusations of collusion. But the hypocrisy gets to ye sometimes.’ He threw a newspaper across to Pooley, who scanned the three pages devoted to the story.

There was a huge interview with Laochraí’s husband, with a large photograph of their wedding. O’Flynn’s ordination was pictured too, along with an encomium from one of his Jesuit contemporaries. A Belfast nun recalled his inspiring music-making in their ‘Healing the Hurt’ group. There was a ‘why-oh-why?’ cry of pain from an Irish columnist who wanted to know how any people could be so evil as to have murdered the best and the bravest of those in the forefront of the struggle for peace.

‘Nothing’s said about their affair, I see. Isn’t that odd?’

‘Not in Ireland, it isn’t. It’s not just that we like to speak well of the dead—publicly that is—but you wouldn’t believe the libel laws.’

‘But they’re dead.’

‘Mightn’t stop the husband suing on the grounds his good name was being impugned and a jury giving him hundreds of thousands. Mind you, I hear some English journalist asked a question about the relationship at a press conference yesterday and was bundled out of the place by MOPE heavies.’

Pooley was shocked. ‘But what about freedom of speech?’

‘Let’s not get into that. The RUC are sure the husband knew all about the affair. But he can hardly be a suspect. How could he have got through that security blanket to murder them over two nights?

‘No. Our murderer is here, so we’d better get down to the interviews. But first, they’re working on it still, but it’s definite yer woman’s wardrobe was booby-trapped with a grenade.’

‘How?’

‘Well, I’m no expert, but what our fella thinks is that someone stuck the grenade to the pole inside the wardrobe, screwed in a cup hook at the back of the door and attached a wire from the pin to the hook. Fiddly, but not that difficult.’

‘Still, you’d need to know what you were about.’

‘You would that. And plenty of nerve.’

‘Right. Now to sources of supply. We’ve checked out Nelligan’s and the owner and his wife knew everyone in the pub on Sunday night—apart from yourselves—and there weren’t any suspect characters at all.

‘Of course that doesn’t rule out someone passing a grenade to one of your contingent, but it makes it less likely.’

‘Gardiner’s friends?’

‘Possible. If you believe that a Presbyterian elder who has lived peaceably in the same Irish village for his whole sixty years running a grocery store and who is almost notorious amongst his neighbours for his respectability, honesty and belief in the supremacy of the law is a likely recruit to loyalist violence, then yes. But there’s the slight problem that he’s also known for driving miles to attend funerals of victims of loyalist violence on both sides of the border in order to show his contempt for murderers of his own religion.’

‘MOPE’s pals?’

‘More promising in one sense. No one in the house they visited has a record, but there are serious suspicions of the older son and the local guard believes some IRA guys on the run have used it as a safe house. What does that prove? After all they were friends of Laochraí’s, which make them an unlikely source for the weapon that killed her. On the other hand there were several visitors that night—a couple of whom were definitely on the most benign interpretation ex-IRA—and who’s to say one of them didn’t provide Liam or Kelly-Mae or Laochraí herself with the means to blow her up.’

‘Because we can’t ignore the possibility that she had the grenade and someone else used it on her?’

‘Far-fetched but possible. The lads are questioning all the neighbours as well as everyone who set foot in that house on Sunday or Monday night but sure there’s nothing to be got out of them. Either they’re innocent and they’ve nothing to tell us or they’re guilty and won’t tell us. Of course we’ll rough them up a bit over the next few days if we have to, but as it stands no one saw anything suspicious and all deny being part of any splinter groups. What more is there to say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘In that case, Bradley, go and get Pascal O’Shea, and Rollo, go and hide yourself.’

***

It was not surprising that O’Shea was charm itself for, as Pooley had been able to report to McNulty, his hairs of the dog had already run to at least four large gins-and-tonic.

‘Ah, is it yourself, Inspector?’ he enquired genially. ‘God, this is terrible. Those poor people. And their poor families. Dreadful. Dreadful.’

‘Could we just run through your movements at the relevant times, Mr O’Shea?’

‘Of course you could. Not a bother in the world. Now what would you like to know about?’

‘What were you doing on Sunday morning?’

O’Shea concentrated hard. ‘Whenabouts?’

‘If you remember, the morning began with a session on what you think of other cultures.’

His face cleared. ‘Oh, yes. Jaysus that was good crack. I was glad I was up for that one. It was great being able to have a go at these people. I wouldn’t want to say these things out loud, but you can be too nice. And you can let off a bit of steam when it’s anonymous.’

‘So you were on time for that?’

‘I was indeed. Didn’t I have breakfast with yer man Hamish about eight thirty and went straight into the room with him and stayed the whole time? And then there was coffee and that was an end to what we had to do that morning. So I went to the bar with a newspaper.’

‘And you went to the ecumenical service.’

‘I did indeed. Though given a choice I wouldn’t have gone within an ass’ roar of it. Are you a religious man yourself, Inspector?’

‘Since you ask, I go to mass usually, Mr O’Shea.’

‘Well to tell the truth, religion bores the behind off me, Inspector. Sure I have a bellyful of weddings and funerals that the wife drags me to without going ruining a peaceful Sunday morning listening to Protestant and Catholic clergy going on about love. But I went to it until I couldn’t stand any more and ran for the bar. Then after lunch we heard about poor Billy Pratt.’

‘And the night when Father O’Flynn had his accident?’

‘Sure I was a walking Guinness bottle meself, that night. Or should I say, a rolling Guinness barrel? I couldn’t tell you a thing that happened that night after about midnight till I woke up around eleven the following morning.’

‘You’ve no evidence, no suggestions, no insights?’

‘Arra, Inspector, look it, sure I’m an alcoholic and they don’t make the best detectives. I only came to this conference because no one else would go. I’ve a decent pension since they eased me out of the civil service on medical grounds and they give me the odd bit of work like this, but I’ve as much interest in Northern Ireland as I have in your left toecap. And the same goes for the Scots, the Welsh, the English, the Indians and the Japs—in fact the whole heap. I like a night out, plenty to drink, a good sing-song, a bit of gas like we had on Sunday night and the rest of them can all go hang.’

‘I gathered from your questions about the flagpole that you’re not very technically-minded, Mr O’Shea. Would I be right there?’

‘I never looked properly at a feckin’ flagpole in my entire life. I thought they were just things you tied flags on to. Ask my wife. She’d tell you I’d a better chance of being a ballet dancer than a handyman. I can’t even drive a bloody car and I gave up the bike after I fell off it twice in the one week twenty years ago. Which pretty well looks after the explosives as well.

‘God in heaven,’ he said, as if the idea had just struck him. ‘Sure I’d be terrified out of my wits just looking at a bomb.’

‘It was a grenade.’

‘’Tis all the same to me. I was never cut out to be a man of action. Jaysus, we didn’t even have toy soldiers when I was a kid. And me own kids can’t even get me to go to James Bond films because they frighten me with all that violence.

‘Now, I’ll grant you that I might have managed the bottles escapade, but it’d be pushing it to think I could change a light bulb. In my house, that kind of thing is women’s work.’

‘What are your political views? Would you describe yourself as a nationalist?’

‘Them fuckin’ Northerners, they should be walled off behind that border. Let them in anywhere and there’s nothing but trouble. The only thing that would drive me to violence is the threat that we might let any of these hoors into a United Ireland.’

‘Have you any ideas or suggestions to offer?’

‘The only idea I’ve got is that you should lock up them shagging Northerners—the ones that are left, that is—oh, yes, and that American pain-in-the-arse as well—and let the rest of us go home to our wives and families. And if you won’t let me go, I’d like you to provide an entire detachment of the Irish army to accompany me day and night until this is sorted out.’

***

‘What do you think, Mr Hughes?’

‘I think this is a nest of vipers, that my life is in danger and no one seems to care and that Billy was murdered for his devotion to the crown and his loyalty to Ulster.’

‘You knew Miss de Búrca and Father O’Flynn before this conference, didn’t you?’

‘I barely knew the priest. Taigs is one thing but Jesuits is another. There’s limits. Laochraí and Liam, now, I wouldn’t have had too much of a problem with. Well recently that is. Since we started to meet on committees and that. We have to acknowledge each other’s differences, as they keep telling us. And find common ground. Well we’d found that OK. I mightn’t have liked them much, but we agreed our main enemy was the old Protestant middle classes who’d ground us all down and we were united about the need for the British and American governments and the EU to give us the grants and the jobs.’

McNulty’s eyes glazed. He changed tack. ‘You definitely had no idea that Billy Pratt was going to raise that flag?’

‘Inspector, I said it before and I’ll say it again. I knew Billy when he hadn’t an arse in his trousers, but he’s learned a lot in recent years and one thing he learned good was how to get on. He wasn’t putting up any flag for God or Ulster. He was putting up a flag for Billy in the hope of taking that seat off me. And if I’d known about it, I wouldn’t have had to murder him. I’d only have had to tell that fat baroness and she’d have bawled him out and taken the flag off of him. But now he’s dead, I’ll probably lose the feckin’ seat to one of his side-kicks anyway on a sympathy vote.

‘As for that priest, I don’t trust priests, let alone Jesuit priests and I didn’t like him one bit. He was full of himself, and I couldn’t understand half of what he said—for all that Billy pretended he could—but if that was a reason to murder someone, I tell you there wouldn’t be a lot of people left to go to conferences on Northern Ireland.

‘And yes, I did serve five years for carrying explosives, but if you were to look up what happened, you’ll find that someone else made the bomb and gave it to me to plant. I put it in the boot of my car, I drove it fifty yards and it blew up. I was in hospital for three months, I still have the scars and quite apart from the five years I spent in jail, I can tell you it put me off the bloody things for life.’

***

‘Mr Gibson, you’re the only person at this conference who knew all the Northern participants at all well.’

‘Guilty as charged, Inspector. And indeed I can see why I might be your favourite suspect. I didn’t know that Billy Pratt intended that nonsense with the flag and had I known I would have done what I could to stop him. But I can’t prove I didn’t know. Indeed we’d had a confidential chat in the bar the previous evening about his election prospects.’

‘Really, Mr Gibson. And why was that?’

‘I’m supposed to know what’s going on at the grassroots.’ He sighed. ‘And what’s more, Billy was by way of being a popular pet with some of my political masters. I had been unofficially charged with passing on to him the information that someone would try to do something for his campaign in terms of giving him a political boost at an appropriate moment.’

‘I get the impression that this was rather distasteful to you.’

‘It was. Indeed Billy was rather distasteful to me. But not that much more distasteful than Mr Hughes or the majority of DUPEs. And certainly no less distasteful than virtually any of the MOPEs. I found it particularly distasteful that they received special treatment from people who seemed to have little grasp of morality or reality. It is no secret that I believe that far too many concessions have been made to people who don’t deserve them.’

‘What emerged from your meeting?’

‘Nothing. Billy said he thought he’d probably win. I have here a note I made afterwards.’ He passed it across to McNulty, who read it out loud, apparently for the benefit of Bradley.

‘“Billy Pratt is confident that he can take the seat if HMG comes through with the community grant he’s been demanding. He said he was suffering somewhat from a diminution in his street cred and was being accused of having sold his soul for a mess of government patronage and foreign junkets. It was therefore a relief to him that Willie Hughes had been persuaded to come to this conference too. He volunteered further allegations about Willie’s involvement in the drug business and indicated that it would be extremely helpful if Willie were picked up on suspicion as long as he wasn’t turned into a martyr.

‘“I stressed to him that this was no concern of mine and that there was no collusion between politicians, officials and the RUC. He didn’t believe me. But then they never do.”’

McNulty gave him back his memorandum. ‘And Father O’Flynn, Mr Gibson?’

‘What is there to say? Ever since he arrived I wished him back in Peru. When you are trying to persuade people to take responsibility for themselves and stop crying “victim,” the last person you want is someone as stupidly ideological as that useful idiot.’ He shrugged. ‘And yes, as I told you before, I knew about him and the wretched de Búrca. Or was pretty sure, anyway. And, yes, in theory I could have managed the bottles and the light bulb.’ He yawned. ‘Sorry, Inspector. I’ve found this weekend very, very tiring.