Death to Pay (34 page)

‘Why did you link the disappearance to Lizzie?’

‘The husband of one of Lizzie’s gang was a bit of a lad. There was a rumour that he was having a fling with the McComber woman. There was talk of a baby.’

‘Tenuous,’ Wilson said.

‘I know, but when I put the rumour together with the wee girl’s statement, it started to make a little sense.’ He gave a gravelly cough. ‘She talked about a lady with straw coloured haired and her friends hurting her mother. That could have been Lizzie and the coven.’

‘Maybe they gave a message to lay off the husband, and McComber disappeared because she feared the worse.’

Armstrong leaned forward. ‘Don’t you think that I thought of that? I was as good at the job as you are. I spoke to everyone that knew McComber. Everyone one of them said the same thing, she was totally dedicated to her little girl. She would never, and they insisted absolutely never, have abandoned her.’

‘Did you follow up with the young girl?’

Armstrong shifted in the wheelchair. ‘This was a couple of years later. The wee girl was put in care. I went to the orphanage looking for her, but she had already been fostered. Apparently, she was a sweet wee thing and children like that get taken quickly.’

‘Which orphanage?’ Wilson asked.

‘It’ll be in my notes.’

‘I haven’t come across any notes from you,’ Moira said.

‘I left all my old notebooks at the station for filing.’

Moira and Wilson exchanged glances.

‘Anything else you’d like to tell us?’ Wilson asked.

‘I did my best to nail Lizzie. I launched missing persons searches for McComber for years. Nothing. I’m convinced Lizzie, and the coven murdered her. The body was never found, and at this stage never will be. I tried to get justice for McComber, and I didn’t succeed. I’m right sorry about that.’

Wilson took a card from his pocket. ‘If anything else occurs to you, I’d be grateful for a call.’ He left the card on the table beside Armstrong.

‘Home for Little Girls,’ Armstrong said lost in thought. ‘Something like that. If you find whoever killed Lizzie, tell them I’m praying for them.’

‘Thank you,’ Wilson said standing. ‘You’ve been a great help.’

Armstrong watched them as they left. The policeman in him wanted Lizzie’s killer caught, but the human being wanted him to escape.

‘What do you think, Boss,’ Moira asked as they sped back towards central Belfast.

‘I think we need to review the McComber file and find out where we can locate her daughter.’ Wilson could feel the tingle he normally got when the case was coming together. ‘It’s a long shot, but it’s all we’ve got for the moment.’

‘I’m not clear on the figures, but I know that more than a thousand people go missing in Northern Ireland every year. Most of them return home, but a fair number are never traced again. Why should McComber be any different from the others? She was a single mother probably living on the Social in a city that was tearing itself apart. That’s a pretty good set of reasons to disappear.’

‘She might have disappeared, but I agree with Armstrong that she would probably have taken the child with her. Some of the missing that don’t return, do so because they’re already in a hole in the ground somewhere. Francis McComber could be one of them.’

‘But what good will the file of a disappeared person do for us. Surely we need to find a body?’

‘First step will be to examine the file. Someone must have investigated the disappearance. We need to see what the investigating officer found. That’s going to be your job.’

‘And what will you be doing?’

‘I will have the great pleasure of interrogating our former colleague McIver.’

Wilson went to the interview room directly he arrived back at the station. He met Harry Graham at the door and they entered together. Ronald McIver looked like a blowup doll that all the air had been let out of. He was dishevelled and had a two-day growth of beard. His eyes were sunken in his head, and his face was a pasty pale colour. His wife probably looked more alive than he did.

McIver looked up as Wilson and Graham entered. His eyes didn’t seem to register them. There was an untouched plastic cup of tea before him on the table.

‘Has he been cautioned?’ Wilson asked.

‘Not by me, Boss,’ Graham said.

‘Do it.’

Graham issued the normal caution.

‘How are you, Ronald?’ Wilson sat across from McIver.

McIver ‘s head came up slowly and there was a confused look on his face. ‘Boss, I’m all right I suppose.’

‘Harry is going to start the recorder, and the interview is being videoed.  Did you understand the caution?’

‘Yes,’ McIver’ s voice had a mechanical tone.

‘Tell me about Ivan McIlroy,’ Wilson said.

‘He was a bully when we were at school. Stole my lunch money whenever I had lunch money to steal. I hated him.’ McIver’s hands were in his lap and he was rubbing one hand against the other absentmindedly.

‘Is that why you killed him?’

McIver laughed out loud. ‘God no.’

‘But you did kill him?’ Wilson asked.

‘I suppose so. The gun went off by itself, Boss. I didn’t mean to kill him. I met him to tell him that I wasn’t going to spy on the team like he wanted me to. I brought the gun in case he wouldn’t let me off the hook. I only wanted to threaten him.’

There was a knock on the door and the desk sergeant entered. He bent and spoke into Wilson’s ear.

Wilson sighed. ‘Interview suspended at twelve ten,’ he said and looked at Graham, who knocked the recorder off.

They followed the desk sergeant out of the interview room.

Jennings’ face was red with anger when Wilson entered Spence’s office. It was clear to Wilson that his boss had been taking a tongue lashing.

‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’ Jennings shouted.

‘I’m interviewing a suspect in a murder case,’ Wilson said calmly.

‘You are interviewing one of your own subordinates. Have you lost your reason?’ He turned and stared at Spence. ‘Are you totally out of control? You cannot have thought it was correct for his superior officer to interview McIver.’

How times have changed, Wilson thought. A few months previous it was perfectly all right to instruct him to interview Joe Worthington, his superior officer at the time. However, now wasn’t the time to throw that back in Jennings’ face. ‘I’m the SIO on the McIlroy case, and it’s my duty to interview individuals suspected of being involved in that murder.’

Jennings came forward and stood directly in front of Wilson. He had to raise his head at an angle to lock eyes. ‘You’re lucky I stopped the interview when I did. I’m having McIver transferred to another station. He’ll be interrogated by officers from that station, or indeed I may ask for officers from another Force to take over this investigation.’

‘You don’t trust us to be impartial?’ Wilson asked.

Jennings turned and walked to Spence’s desk. He held his thumb and first finger of his right hand close together. ‘I am this far of charging both of you with misconduct. The only thing that’s stopping me is that this event will cause enough bad press for the Force and dragging you two over the coals will only exacerbate that situation. Superintendent Wilson, you are no longer Senior Investigating Officer on the Ivan McIlroy murder case. You will prepare to hand over the murder book, and all pertinent evidence to an officer designated by me.’  He turned to Spence. ‘Chief Superintendent, I will be issuing you with a letter of reprimand which will be added to your personnel file. Nobody from this station speaks to McIver. Understood.’

Neither Wilson nor Spence responded.

Jennings turned and stormed out of the office.

Spence made the action of wiping his brow. ‘I suppose he has a point,’ he said when Jennings was out of the office.

‘Ronald is a mess. Right now he’d confess to killing JFK and Martin Luther King. The only chance he has of getting some kind of justice is if we have all the preliminary interviews done here. Jennings doesn’t just want him transferred to another station. He wants him transferred to somewhere he can control the situation. Somehow or other he’s looking for a way to turn this situation against you and particularly me.’

Spence put his head in his hands. He could see his pension flying out the window.  ‘I suppose there’s nothing we can do.’

‘Maybe there is,’ Wilson took out his mobile phone, flipped through his contacts and rang. ‘It’s Ian Wilson, is she available.’ He waited for half a minute or so. ‘Kate,’ he said finally. ‘I need a favour.’

CHAPTER 62

Wilson oversaw the packing up of the murder book and the collection of all the papers relating to the Ivan McIlroy murder. Eric Taylor was particularly pissed at handing over all the good work that he had done on the case. Wilson had Eric take a photo of the whiteboard containing all the information on the McIlroy case before dismantling the board and scrubbing the writing. The case was no longer his. The dissatisfaction of the team was palpable as they bundled up the information they had collected. No policeman is happy when handing over an almost completed case. It was even worse when the culprit was someone they knew intimately.

‘What’ll happen to Ronald, Boss,’ Harry Graham spoke for his colleagues as they completed the packing of the evidence.

‘My guess is the DPP will come to some arrangement with his legal team. From what we heard today the crime wasn’t premeditated. That means the most he’ll be charged with is manslaughter. I’m sure that his legal team will have some head doctor or other look at him. They’ll decide that he was out of his tree when he committed the McIlroy manslaughter, and he’ll be sent away to get his marbles put back in.’

‘What about the wife?’ Taylor asked.

‘Different case,’ Wilson said. ‘Acting while the balance of his mind was disturbed would be my guess. He’ll be off to the funny farm on that one to.’

‘Come on, Boss. You can’t kill two people and not do time,’ Taylor said.

‘Depends on his legal representation,’ Wilson said. ‘Some people say that O.J. Simpson murdered two people, and he walked out of the courtroom a free man. That’s a hell of a precedent.’

‘Do we concentrate on the Lizzie, Morison and Boyle murders now,’ Taylor asked.

‘We do, and we regroup quickly,’ Wilson said. He briefed them on the meeting with ex-DCI Armstrong. ‘Moira is gone to pick up a copy of the missing persons investigation.’

The door to the squad room opened, and Moira entered carrying a buff folder. She marched to where the team were assembled around the whiteboard. She didn’t look happy. ‘This is a bloody joke,’ she said opening the folder and taking out four A4 pages.

‘That’s it?’ Wilson asked.

Moira held up the four pages. ‘The investigation into the disappearance of Francis McComber.’

‘What about Armstrong’s notes?’ Wilson asked.

‘Disappeared, thrown out. Nobody remembers him leaving any notes behind.’

‘We shouldn’t read too much into that,’ Wilson said. ‘Every now and then the uniforms are told to spring clean. That means trash everything that’s not nailed down.’

‘I’m not as charitable as you,’ Moira said. ‘I think someone wanted this file buried. They couldn’t just get rid of all the paper, so they left a few sheets in case anyone came back later. This all went down thirty years ago. They thought it was buried.’

‘I presume you’ve already read the four pages,’ Wilson said.

She closed the folder. ‘Three witness statements all leading to the conclusion that McComber hit the road of her own free will and a copy of the child’s statement. The latter is the only document that I’d believe.’

‘So,’ Wilson said. ‘We start by re-investigating the disappearance of Francis McComber in..?’

‘1983,’ Moira said.

‘Boss,’ Harry Graham said. ‘Thirty years ago, and that’s not our territory. We should pass this to the Historical Crimes Team. They have the resources for this type of investigation.’

‘They’ve also got a caseload of several hundred murders,’ Wilson said. ‘Do you really think that they’re going to concentrate on a missing persons case? We’re not trying to find Francis McComber. We’re looking for a motive for three particularly violent murders, and McComber may, or may not, help us establish that motive. It’s the only lead we’ve had since the beginning of this investigation.’

‘Ok, Boss,’ Moira said. ‘What’s the plan?’

‘Let’s look at the three victims again. Peter, did you notice any pictures of Joan Boyle’s husband at the Boyle house?’

‘No, Boss,’ Davidson said.

‘I wonder why. And why did they move away from West Belfast? The house is still a crime scene?’

‘Yes, Boss,’ Davidson said.

‘Get back there and find me the answers to those questions. Eric, you take Morison. Maybe he knows more than he’s letting on. Pump him. Don’t take any old crap from him. Bring him back thirty years and put Francis McComber in front of him. Moira will look for McComber’s daughter while Harry and I will take our good friend Billy Rice. We meet here at six.’

Maggie Cummerford was bringing her life in Belfast to a close. She had already deposited her notice with the Chronicle, but the asshole editor had insisted that she work a couple of days while he interviewed some hopefuls for her job.  He was already buffing up his couch before she’d left his office. She had checked her apartment with Luminol to make sure that not a trace of blood could be found. She had scrubbed until she was satisfied that there was nothing that could tie her to the murders of Rice, Morison and Boyle. She was happy that she had avenged the death of her mother. Three for one was not a bad average. It might have been more but there was no point in being greedy and getting caught into the bargain. She thought about dropping by Wilson’s office to wish him farewell, but he was a smart bastard and that would be something out of the ordinary that might pique his interest. She already dumped fifty per cent of her clothes into a charity shop. Her landlord squeezed a month’s rent out of her, and she had closed her utilities as from the end of the week. She didn’t yet decide on her final destination. Somewhere warm where she could get the cold and humidity of Belfast out of her bones. But also somewhere well out of the way. It was either the US or Luang Prabang in Laos. It was possible to disappear in places like that and re-emerge as someone else.  She’d make up her mind at the last minute. She opened the locket that hung around her neck and looked at the photograph of her mother. She would have liked to have known her better. Lizzie Rice had made sure that she would never have the chance. She sighed. It was strange to be at the end of the revenge trail. It was a bit like leaving school or university. A weight was lifted off her shoulders. She was finally free of an event that had haunted her for thirty years. She was free to become Maggie McComber.