“I survived because death is not the end.”
G
iven the seriousness of Kenneth Mitchell’s injuries Daly had expected him to be living in some sort of sheltered accommodation, so he was surprised to find the directions taking him to a farm close to the border at Aughnacloy. It was a windy day. The border roads were tortuous, a tangled web of former cart tracks and winding lanes that led everywhere and nowhere. Perfect for smuggling diesel or, in his father’s day, a horde of fattened pigs, mused Daly.
The weather seemed unable to settle into one particular mood. A desolate sky alternated with views of a low, sharp sun. After a squall of rain, the clouds cleared and the wind dropped completely.
On the approach to the house, Daly glimpsed a tranquil lake flashing through trees, disturbingly still through the black branches, like a view of a dream or another dimension. A neat, stone-built house overlooked the lake. The reflections of the trees, some thickly branched, some sparse, added to the stillness of the scene.
He noticed a look of anxiety pass across the boy’s face. Daly wondered if he was handling this right. The difficulty was he didn’t know what exactly he was trying to achieve by coming here. By itself, rubbing Special Branch’s nose in it was hardly a good enough reason.
“You know, you can sit this out and stay in the car,” Daly told him.
“It’s OK. I know the details of the investigation as well as the furniture in my bedroom. The amount of hours I’ve sat in bed going over it all in my head…” He looked at the lake. “It’s the stillness that makes me feel anxious. I want to drop a huge stone into that water.”
It was too quiet for Daly’s taste too. The backdrop of the forest enclosed the house and guarded the icy stillness in the air. He watched the transfixed trees, waiting for some form of movement, the shadow of a bird, or the tremble of a leaf, but none came.
“I want you to ask him where Dad’s body is,” said Dermot. His face was as motionless as a photograph.
“You think he might know?”
“Mum thinks he’s capable of remembering some clue or lead that might help the search.”
How can you forget something like that in the first place? wondered Daly. How long can you keep details like that hidden? He looked at the boy. If Mitchell did know the story behind Oliver Jordan’s disappearance, it was about to come back and haunt him with a vengeance.
A brand-new jeep filled the small garage next to the house. The grounds looked as though an expert gardener regularly tended them. The gravel paths were free of weeds, and juniper trees in pots sat at the front door. The vines of some creeping plant covered the walls.
Mitchell’s pension must have included a generous compensation package for his injuries, thought Daly. Either that or Tessa Jordan had given Dermot the wrong address. Perhaps he should have phoned first before allowing the suspense to build. He rapped the front door.
After a while, an elderly man walked stiffly from around the side of the house.
“I don’t use the front door,” he said, reaching out to shake Daly’s hand. “As you can see, I have a problem with steps.”
His hand grip was bone-cracking. Daly felt as though the energy of the man’s entire body and personality had been transmitted through the handshake.
“Detective Kenneth Mitchell?” asked Daly.
A look of concern flashed across Mitchell’s face. He reached out a hand to hold on to the steel bar that ran around the house. He looked Daly and Dermot up and down, his eyes narrowing to two flecks of flint.
“Haven’t been called that in a long time.”
Daly introduced himself and fished in his pocket for his ID, but the old man was already walking away.
“I don’t want to be bothered. The past is the past. Better left that way.”
“Oliver Jordan. What about him?”
Mitchell turned around. His features were compact, unyielding. There was a light in his eyes, but no warmth. The same cold light that filled the lake and outlined the groping branches of the trees. The muscles began to move on his forehead and jaw.
“What do I care about a dead informer?”
“I’m investigating the murder of Joseph Devine and the disappearance of David Hughes. If I could just talk to you for a while.”
Mitchell studied the ground for a moment. “Not much harm in talking, I suppose,” he said. “I served as an RUC officer for more than thirty years, and in that time I was stalked, hunted, and had my body torn apart by Republican terrorists. One morning as I drove to work, a bomb went off under my car. It was attached to the ignition. The force of it blew the clothes off me. The first thing I saw when I came to was the tattoo of the Ulster flag on my bare arm. I reached down, but couldn’t find my left leg. They found my boots twenty yards away in a ditch. I should have saved the IRA the bother and left the force when the Troubles started.”
He glared at Daly, his eyes icy and still.
“I just need some background information.” Daly tried to be as honest as possible. “I don’t really know why I’m here, only that I have a feeling there is something unexplained about Oliver Jordan’s disappearance. There are those who say the police never wanted to find his kidnappers. I don’t know if that’s true or false. I hope it’s not true. This is his son with me.”
For the first time Mitchell looked genuinely unsettled. As though he were the observer of two worlds jarring together: a pair of unexpected visitors on a winter’s morning, and the memories of seventeen years earlier. Both worlds were full of pitfalls. He glanced at Daly and managed to squeeze out a smile.
“You can come inside as my guest. If only for the pleasure of watching a PSNI officer flounder when confronted by the past.” He glanced at Dermot with curiosity. “You can come in too. I thought you were too young to be a new recruit.”
They entered the house around the back. Through a half-opened door, Daly glimpsed a spare room full of artificial legs.
“For the past ten years I’ve searched a replacement for the real one the IRA blew away,” said Mitchell, sitting down and removing his left leg. “The problem with prosthetics is their weight. You don’t notice how heavy your legs are because they seem to move by themselves. This one’s light, but after a few hours it’s like having a pair of forceps pinching you. Better that than being too loose, though. Those ones tend to chafe and buckle underneath. Then there’s the stump.” He lifted up what remained of his left leg. It was gray and misshapen with loose folds of skin. “It changes shape over the years. So they keep having to change the socket. The last time I was fitted, they scanned my leg with lasers. My consultant told me, without a trace of irony, that it was a giant step forward.”
He lifted a walking stick and hobbled over to the kettle, showing a brisk indifference to his disability.
“My mother used to say that nine-tenths of a person was willpower. The IRA could never blow those nine-tenths away.”
Mitchell looked at his two guests. “But then, you haven’t come to listen to stories about my leg.” He shifted his amputated limb. “You know, I can still feel the tendons throbbing in my missing foot. It’s been following me all these years.” He stared at Dermot. “Like a bad memory.”
“Can we talk about Oliver Jordan?” asked Daly.
“I told you I don’t like talking of the past. I worked on countless murder investigations like Oliver Jordan’s; many of them involved informers and the intelligence agencies. It was a dirty little war that had to be fought. But you can’t expect me to remember every case after all these years.”
His eyes sank into their sockets.
“There’s a good reason why you should be able to remember more about my dad’s case,” said Dermot.
“What’s that?” Mitchell’s response was as quick as the crack of a whip.
“It was the last one you ever worked upon. You retired on health grounds a month after being assigned to the investigation. March 20, 1990.”
Mitchell sat silently. The corners of his mouth dropped into an appraising scowl.
“Now do you remember?”
“Listen, son. The past is the past. You’ve got to leave it behind. Nothing you can do will bring your father back. You ought to be studying at college, or partying, or learning how to hang-glide or something. Not here in this room with me.”
“I just want the cover-up to end. I want the facts. Facts don’t lie or deceive.”
“Nor do they forgive.” Mitchell sighed. He paused, his eyes darting back and forth. Something quick and dark had caught their attention. A reel of images from the past flitted through his mind.
“All I can give you is my opinion. Your father was a very interesting man.”
He returned to his tea and gave no indication of expanding upon his observation.
“Interesting to the IRA? Or to Special Branch?” asked Daly.
“Interesting to me. I watched many men unravel during the Troubles. Men in the security forces, neighbors, on both sides. I saw there was a void in them where there should have been pity and respect for life. Oliver Jordan was different. At least, I like to believe so.”
“How come?” said Daly.
“I think he managed to figure out something for himself. He lived in a Republican heartland, and the natural thing for him would have been to support the IRA in whatever they did. Oliver was a true child of the Troubles. He was only a toddler when the Civil Rights movement started. His parents were unemployed; their housing was poor. The Troubles ended any hope he would have had for a normal life for his family. Riots flared up right on his doorstep. Oliver lived and breathed in the company of Republicans. They also killed him. But Oliver was a man of courage in spite of the terrible pressure that was brought to bear upon him.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dermot.
“Your father was asked to fit out a bomb by his boss, an IRA man. It was not uncommon for this boss to put pressure on his staff to do little jobs for the Republican cause. He gave Jordan the job of fixing the electronics for the detonator. For some reason Jordan left out the battery, and in so doing signed his death warrant. The bomb was meant to go off at a Remembrance Day parade, but it never detonated. Special Branch investigated the incident and arrested several IRA men. When the IRA discovered that Oliver had sabotaged the operation, suspicion immediately fell on him that he was an informer.”
“How did the IRA find out there was no battery in the device?” asked Daly.
“A legal slip-up, supposedly. Somehow sensitive details of the Special Branch investigation found their way into documents requested by the IRA men while they were on remand.”
“Who were their solicitors?”
“O’Hare and Co.”
“Who also represented Oliver,” said Daly.
Daly glanced at the boy. Dermot was pale and silent, peering through the window at the branches of a wintry tree, and then at the shadows in the room, his eyes as piercing as a knife. Every now and again, he would glance back furtively at Mitchell and digest what he was saying. The story came to him in pieces. Some psychological defense mechanism was cutting up the truth of his father’s death into morsels he could bear.
Daly’s stomach tightened. He felt a protective yearning toward the boy. He worried that he was exposing him too harshly to the past. But he had insisted on coming, and it was he who had supplied the address of the retired detective.
“It was Devine who slipped in the information about the battery. Wasn’t it?” said Daly.
“If it was, I never found any evidence.”
“But that suggests Oliver was framed.”
“An army intelligence officer told me the IRA had been tricked by Special Branch into thinking Oliver was the informer. It was the branch’s theory that few tears would be shed over his death. He had worked for the IRA, after all. It also diverted attention away from the person who was really touting. The detail of the missing battery was deliberately slipped in.”
“What role did Devine play in this?”
“It was obvious to me that Special Branch had not only a window into O’Hare’s firm and their Republican clients but also the means to pull levers within it and eliminate opponents.”
Daly thought of Joseph Devine, the dull clerk sitting sun-starved in the legal dungeon of O’Hare’s practice, secretly working all those years for Special Branch. Given the number of Republican clients the firm represented, Devine could have caused all sorts of problems.
“I had a sneaking admiration for Devine,” admitted Mitchell. “If he was a spy, he was a clever one. Agents like him were the tools of the security forces. Survival meant walking a tightrope all the way to eternity. There was no hopping off. The more successful the spy became, the greater the risk of discovery. Once an informer has passed the first piece of information to the police, he is trapped—open to blackmail from his handlers if he withdraws cooperation, facing certain death if the IRA finds out. Republicans have only one sentence for touts—execution. Everyone knows that.”
Mitchell sank back into his chair and closed his eyes.
Daly looked at Dermot. Oliver Jordan would have known that too. The IRA had probably extracted some sort of confession from him. Most victims eventually tell their captors exactly what they want to hear, and beg for their lives.
“You’re suggesting Oliver was sacrificed by Devine and Special Branch to protect an important informer within the IRA?”
“I’m not suggesting anything, Inspector Daly. I’m only bringing these suspicions to your attention.”
“What did the IRA do with Dad’s body?”
Mitchell sighed heavily. “Understand this. When it comes to finding out how a group of IRA men got rid of a dead body, everybody in this country is suddenly deaf and blind. The closest I got to the truth was from an old farmer who told me he was buried in bog land. That was the only lead I ever got.”
“Sounds like this farmer might be a reliable witness. What was his name?” asked Daly.
“I don’t remember.”
“What do you mean you don’t remember?”
Mitchell shifted in his chair but said nothing.
“Why are you being evasive?” asked Dermot.
“I told you I don’t remember his name. Has it become a crime in this country to forget?” He stared at the two of them, eyes full of vehemence. “If you don’t mind seeing yourselves out, now. My leg hurts when I’m stressed.”