Death to Pay (17 page)

‘Put that fuckin’ thing away, or I’ll tear your fuckin’ head off,’ despite the bravado there was a tremor in McIlroy’s voice.

‘No,’ McIver raised the Glock and pointed it at McIlroy.

‘Let’s be reasonable about this,’ McIlroy held his hands out and took a step forward. Something over seven feet now separated the two men.

‘No more steps forward,’ McIver said. McIlroy’s eyes were dilated. They reminded McIver of a rat’s eyes when it’s cornered. He remembered that a rat is at its most dangerous when it’s cornered. He held the gun as steady as his hand and his heightened emotional state would permit.

‘Put the gun away,’ McIlroy said. He was about to piss his pants. He pushed the little bastard too far. Shouldn’t have threatened the wifey, he said to himself. The wee bastard has nothing else in his life. ‘I was only kiddin’. I wouldn’t harm you. After all, we go way back.’ He looked around the derelict building. ‘We had some great times here.’

McIver’s brain was racing. He was in a very bad place. McIlroy was vicious, and he wouldn’t forget that he had pulled a gun on him. Something very bad would happen to him when his usefulness was over. He couldn’t betray Wilson, and he wasn’t about to put his wife’s life in danger. He didn’t care about himself. He should have gone to Wilson before it went this far. They could have pulled McIlroy in. But he would have been out as quickly, and then he would come looking for McIver.

McIlroy could almost see the wheels spinning in McIver’s brain. This could go either of two ways. McIver could put the gun away, or he could pull the trigger. If it was him that was holding the gun, it would only go one way but the wee man didn’t have his balls. There was still a chance that he could get out of this.  He opened his arms wide in a peace gesture. ‘Ok, pal. We’ll forget about you bein’ our man in Wilson’s team. Think about it. There’s nothing wrong with Sammy wantin’ a few minutes with the man that murdered his mother before handin’ him over to the peelers.’

McIver suddenly realised that he was the rat in the corner and not McIlroy. There was only one way out. Although he had possessed a gun since the first day he had joined the Force, he had never thought that he would ever have to use it. His life was over whichever way he jumped. McIlroy and the Rice gang would murder him and his wife as quickly as they would drink a cup of tea. Killing McIlroy would remove that threat but would ultimately lead to him being caught and jailed. But maybe not.

McIlroy prided himself on his ability to read people’s faces. It had saved his life before. The wee man was coming to a conclusion, and it wasn’t going to be a good one. There was only one possibility, and that was if he could cover the seven feet quicker than McIver could fire. He tried to see whether the safety was still on, but it was obscured from his view. It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was his only one. He launched himself forward.

The gun bucked in McIver’s hand. He moved to the side and fired again. The sound reverberated around the corridor, and he wanted to put his hands over his ears.

The bullet caught McIlroy in the chest and stopped him dead. He looked down and saw blood already staining his shirt. He looked up and saw McIver. Fuckin’ little rat, he thought. Killed by the biggest wanker in the school. A second bullet hit his chest, and he fell to the ground.

Detective Constable Ronald McIver moved forward in a daze. He bent and put his fingers to McIlroy’s neck. There was no pulse. He searched McIlroy’s pockets to see if had had a weapon. McIlroy was unarmed. He stood and looked down at the body at his feet. He realised that he had visualised this situation in the past. McIlroy had been his tormentor at school, and he now had a vivid memory of imagining how he would kill him. He had just murdered his tormentor in cold blood bringing to life his imagination. There were extenuating circumstances. McIlroy went for him. In the end, it had been self-defence but he had been the one holding the gun. He should call it in. He would be banged up. They might buy the self-defence but they might not. That would mean jail time. Then there was the question of Sammy Rice. Would he be prepared to let bygones be bygones? Or would he wait for the right moment and have some inmate plant a knife in his chest? And who would take care of Mary during all this? He bent down and checked McIlroy’s pulse again. Nothing. He took the roll of notes from the pocket of his jacket. A sudden thought struck him. What if McIlroy had told Sammy about him? His body shook involuntarily. He put the gun into his pocket and added the roll of cash. He noticed the two ejected shell casings in the corner. He picked them up and put them in his pocket. He leaned against the wall of the corridor and wept.

CHAPTER 34

Wilson flopped onto his ergonomically designed office chair and opened the newspaper. Maggie Cummerford made the front page, surprise, surprise. The PSNI was stumped on the Lizzie Rice murder, but they were developing some lines of enquiry on the Nancy Morison case. There was an interview with Morison’s husband who declared his wife to be a paragon of virtue, a regular church-goer and a visitor to the sick and destitute. He could think of no possible reason someone would want her dead. Join the queue, Wilson thought. There was an article on the Lizzie Rice funeral decrying the continued practice of turning what should be a family affair into a political event. There were pictures of the flag-draped coffin and the funeral cortege. The shots fired were glossed over. Nobody wanted to admit that decommissioning didn’t really mean decommissioning. There were still plenty of guns out there, and they were in the hands of people who really shouldn’t have them. This was Ulster. Of course, there was the normal crime. Husbands killed wives, usually their own, and vice versa. Lovers killed their partners. Idiot teenagers stabbed other idiot teenagers. The crimes would be solved quickly, and some smart-arsed barrister would dredge up a nefarious political motivation for the crime. Political crimes could lead to early release as had already been proven by the various amnesties tagged on to political settlements. A secondary article discussed the riots. They were a bit of a damp squib according to the correspondent. Twenty-two people had been arrested, and four policemen were in hospital, the result of a mini-riot Ulster style. Some damp squib for the injured. Wilson slowly turned the pages of the newspaper bringing himself up to date on the life of the province. He stopped dead on page eight. A picture of Kate dominated the centre of the page. ‘Brilliant Young QC In Line for Top Job’ was the headline. He quickly ran through the article. It was a resumé of Kate’s life and career. Thankfully, he didn’t appear in it. She was being touted as a candidate for Director of Public Prosecutions. If she succeeded, she would be the youngest person to have attained the post. Kate and he had never discussed money since they had lived together. He stuffed as much as he could into a jar in the kitchen each month, and Kate used it as she saw fit. The apartment was Kate’s, and she had steadfastly refused to accept that he should pay for the privilege of living there. He knew that she made a lot of money but when he saw her supposed annual income published in the article he almost fell off his chair. Kate earned a multiple of his salary. He picked up the telephone and called her private number.

‘Hi,’ her voice was cheery. ‘You’ve seen the newspaper.’

‘You should have warned me. I wasn’t aware that you were going to hit such heights.’

‘I’m not. I’m on a list, but it’s a pretty long one. I’m ten to twenty years away from having a real chance. But you know the way the members of the Fourth Estate behave. I’m the youngest candidate, so I’m the story.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘We haven’t talked that much lately. You’ve been busy and quite honestly I prefer to talk about our impending child than my boring job.’

‘According to this article your job isn’t so boring.’ And incredibly well paid, Wilson thought but did not say.

‘Paper talk, I was following your normal instruction on anonymity when I gave you a cursory mention and then only in the context of my pregnancy.’

‘It’s appreciated. So there’s no impending possibility that you are going to be even more busy, than you are now.’

‘Absolutely, I’ve told my clerk that as of the end of the month I am not accepting any new briefs. Although I know you don’t believe it, I’m as committed to having a healthy baby as you are. Now get back to work and find that damn murderer so we can spend a bit more time together.’

‘When this case is over, we’re going to spend a few days in a hotel. I’m beginning to realise that there are sides to you that I’ve never explored. It might even mean introducing a little shop talk into our relationship.’

‘That sounds interesting. Forget the hotel. Let’s just lock the door of the apartment and make believe that we’re the only people left on earth.’

‘I can’t wait. See you this evening.’

Wilson looked up and saw Moira on the other side of his glass door. She was holding a copy of the newspaper pressed against the glass partition, and she was smiling. He motioned her in.

‘Nice article,’ she said noticing the paper in front of Wilson.

‘My partner the superstar,’ Wilson smiled.

‘She’s the woman who has everything,’ Moira said and reddened when she realised that it could include Wilson. ‘Successful career and about to have a baby what more can you ask for.’

‘How’s Brendan?’ Wilson asked.

‘As crazy as usual. Now that he’s met you, he’s fixated. He’s taken to nicknaming me Watson. All his university friends have followed his lead. It’s funny and it makes me laugh, but I wish they’d continued calling me Moira.’

‘I’m glad you’re happy, but I’m afraid that I might lose you at some point.’

‘How so?’

‘Brendan’s on a sabbatical. Sooner or later, he’s going back to Boston and maybe you’ll go with him.’ He noticed her frowning. It looked like she was hearing something that she told herself, but that she didn’t like the sound of.

‘Possible but not probable,’ she noticed the team gathering at the whiteboard for the morning briefing. ‘I think they’re waiting for us.’

Wilson stood before the whiteboard. ‘Where’s Ronald?’

‘Sick, Boss,’ Harry Graham said. ‘Had him on the phone, and he sounded like he was about to croak.’

‘Not convenient,’ Wilson said. ‘We need someone who can work the magic machine, aside from Moira that is. Peter, any movement on the photograph?’

‘Not a lot, Boss,’ Davison said. ‘But it’s early days. It’s definitely the Shankill Branch of the women’s UVF early 1980’s. There are eight women in total in the photo. Lizzie is in the middle with Nancy Morison beside her. I’m told that they were inseparable at the time. I’ve been around the houses in the Shankill, and I’ve identified two more of the women, both deceased. That makes four. The four others are a bit of a mystery at the moment. It looks like a couple have moved away, possibly to England while the other two maybe somewhere in the Province but as yet address unknown.’

‘Nancy Morison’s movements, Harry?’

‘Nothing particular in the past few days. She attended the wake at the Ballygomartin house accompanied by her husband. She was at the funeral and then the graveyard. She went back with the crowd to the ‘Black Bear’, and that’s where the timeline gets fuzzy.’ Graham pointed at the timeline on the whiteboard. ‘ We’re concentrating on the two hours between six to eight o’clock. Traffic has already sent us some disks, and we’re collecting what available from businesses in the area. It’s going to be a thankless task going through all those tapes.’

‘That’s what they pay us for,’ Wilson said. ‘Moira, how’s the research on Lizzie going?’

Moira smiled. ‘It’s an education, Boss. I wasn’t up to speed on the activities of our undercover colleagues during the seventies and the eighties, but I’m learning fast. The material is copious and heavily redacted. There are lots of mentions of Lizzie, and I’ve only just started to include Nancy Morison in the search. The files are so heavily redacted that sometimes I have to guess at what’s behind the black strikeouts. So it’s going to take a while, and it may have absolutely nothing to do with the case.’

‘Keep on it,’ Wilson looked at the rear of the squad room. No sign of wee Maggie. ‘Eric, you help Harry on the tapes. Find me something. And Eric, get Jimmy McGreary in here for twelve o’clock and book the soft interview room. We don’t want Jimmy to get the wrong impression.’

‘OK, Boss,’ Taylor said.

Wilson glanced at his watch. ‘Nancy’s autopsy’s in one hour. Moira, you and me. The rest of you get at it, time’s passing. We have someone out there bashing in old women’s heads. I want to find the bastard.’

The group broke up. Moira joined Wilson. ‘Are you sure that you want me along? Three’s company and all that.’

He looked at her. Both her eyes and her mouth were laughing. Brendan Guilfoyle was having a positive effect on her. ‘I definitely want you along.’

CHAPTER 35

Detective Constable Ronald McIver sat on a chair in his living room. He hadn’t slept a wink. He had returned to the small house that he occupied with his wife at ten o’clock the previous evening. His sister-in-law was already gone, and his wife had been put to bed. Ever since his wife’s mind had begun to slip, he had moved into the spare bedroom so that neither one would disturb the other’s sleep. His wife was often confused and switched on the light at all times of the night. He left the door of the spare room open so that he could follow her movements when necessary. There was, therefore, nobody who could corroborate or not the actual time he had returned home. He wasn’t a big drinker but there was always a bottle of Bushmills on hand in case someone visited. He hit the bottle as soon as he returned home but was unable to get more than three glasses down. Deep down, he knew that he was screwed. He had killed a man, and he was going to have to pay the price. He had played the scene in the derelict school over and over in his mind. Each time he tried to find the salient point that would lead to his arrest for murder. Nobody knew he was there. Unless McIlroy had told someone, and that wasn’t certain. On the surface, he didn’t leave a trace. He thought about what kind of evidence he might have left. He hadn’t touched anything in the school that he could remember. Collecting evidence in a place that had been used by junkies and dossers would be a herculean task. He picked up his coat and felt in the pocket. The shell casings were there. He had been in a fugue state when he had picked them up but he now realised that it had been a smart move. He rubbed them on his jacket and dropped them back in his pocket. He had cleaned the Glock as soon as he had returned home. He had also burned every stitch of clothing he had been wearing.  He scrubbed his hands with paraffin and soap in the hope of getting rid of any gunshot residue. Since the ‘Troubles’ started, there were more than five thousand unsolved homicides in Northern Ireland. Why couldn’t the death of Ivan McIlroy be just another unsolved murder? Then it hit him. There was only one piece of physical evidence against him. McIlroy called his mobile phone number early in the day to set up the meeting. His number was on record at the station. Somehow he was going to have to come up with an explanation for that phone call. He looked across the room to where Mary sat. Her eyes appeared to be watching him intently, but they were dead. He wondered whether she could take in what she had seen him do. ‘How are you, love?’ he said. ‘What about a nice cup of tea?’