Silence (9 page)

‘But many people in this country suspect there was collusion between the police and Loyalist terrorists,’ said Daly.

‘Yes, and until we tidy up this little mess, they’ll keep believing the conspiracy theories of fantasists like Walsh. The worry is these rumours and lies will become entrenched in the public imagination and destroy the reputation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.’

‘And what’s so terrible about that? The RUC no longer exists; most of its officers have been pensioned off.’ Daly glanced over at Donaldson. The former commander ignored the comment. He stood upright, unflinching in his own stolid way, a monolith from the past.

‘We are still a force in transition, Inspector Daly. Never forget that. And we are advancing by trial and error. It’s in no one’s interest to have unfounded allegations hanging over our officers, past or present.’

Donaldson cleared his throat, and Fealty glanced at him, nodding as if to confirm he could speak.

‘The past is a dangerous place,’ said Donaldson. ‘Fragmented. Murky. That’s why the Police Service of Northern Ireland is trying to move on. Look to the future.’ His face carried the strain, the rigor of someone bent on concealment.

‘What exactly is your point?’ asked Daly.

‘Walsh was living in the past, Daly,’ replied Donaldson. ‘Don’t let him drag you back there, too. It’s true that back in the early days some mistakes were made by commanding officers. However, it was because they wanted to believe their men’s statements. They were caught up in the fear of the time, the sense of a country unravelling. Walsh got it wrong. There was no definite plan to cover up or condone these Loyalist attacks and certainly not any direct police involvement in them. We discovered a few rotten officers in the force, but these men were disciplined and expelled as soon as their links with Loyalists became clear.’

Fealty eyed Daly sharply.

‘You seem nonplussed by your former commander’s explanation.’

‘Believe me, I am anything but nonplussed. Every cell of my body is gripped.’

‘But not so gripped you’ll rush out and interfere with this investigation. Right?’

Daly felt his blood churn like a suppressed spring.

‘You should know that I made a personal discovery in Walsh’s research. I came across my mother’s name.’

‘Was she a confidante of his?’ Fealty looked puzzled.

Daly scraped his chair on the floor as he leaned forward.

‘Her name was not on any list of friends or contacts. It was next to a red pin on his murder map. His triangle of death.’

Fealty’s eyes bulged with genuine surprise.

‘Your mother was one of the murder victims?’

‘Correct.’

Fealty risked another question.

‘How did she die?’

‘Her name was Angela Daly. She died on the second of April 1979. According to the official line, she got caught in crossfire between a police unit and the IRA. However, Walsh discovered that the weapon used in the shooting was the same one used by the Loyalist gang.’

Fealty paused and thought. He seemed to lose some of his confidence.

‘I am sorry for your loss, Inspector. However, if this claim of Walsh’s is the reason you insist on investigating his death then you are misguided.’

‘Misguided? I’ve discovered that my mother was quite possibly a murder victim. I want to verify Walsh’s research, and have my mother’s killers brought to justice. Am I misguided to want that?’ Daly leaned closer to Fealty, his physical bulk crowding Fealty’s desk. He was prepared to drag an answer from the Special Branch detective with his bare hands.

‘No. You are not misguided. But your personal loss will interfere with the investigation. You will see everything through its distorting mirror.’

Fealty’s cool reasoning only heightened Daly’s anger.

‘If these twisted cowards had taken your mother and not mine, you wouldn’t be sitting here trying to divert my search for the truth.’

‘You can’t let her death skew your approach to the investigation,’ said Fealty.

Murder was the word Daly wanted Fealty to say, not death, but the Special Branch detective had already moved on.

‘Detective Irwin has raised concerns about your reliability in handling such a sensitive case. He claims that Walsh’s mobile phone was removed from the accident site.’ Something about Fealty’s tone suggested he doubted Irwin’s ability to conduct a thorough search of the scene. ‘I have to remind you that this is an important piece of evidence,’ he added.

‘Why is it so important?’ asked Daly.

‘It wasn’t important until a murder victim turned up in Walsh’s hotel room. We don’t yet know what clues it will yield, if any.’

‘Clues that might prove Walsh was murdered?’

‘That’s overstating the case. All I mean is that information on the phone might reveal why McClintock was in the hotel room and who else knew he was there.’

‘All I can tell you is that I haven’t got the phone.’

‘A pity,’ said Fealty. ‘For a moment I thought you were going to provide us with a valuable lead.’

‘But I do have an idea where Walsh might have hid it.’

As Daly said this, all three men exchanged glances.

‘Catholic clergy are used to communicating through symbols,’ explained Daly. ‘Walsh left behind a clue that points straight to where he hid the phone, assuming you know where to look.’

‘Which is where?’

He was not being entirely truthful with Fealty. He believed he did have a clue about Walsh’s phone, but it was a flimsy clue, a single, almost invisible thread that was in danger of slipping through his fingers. It was less a clue and more an inkling, one that might yet guide him closer to the heart of the mystery

‘If you’re so anxious to find the phone, let me follow my hunch.’

Fealty stared at Daly, sizing up his resistance.

‘Very well, Inspector. How do you plan to proceed with your hunch?’ His voice was smooth but hard.

‘Do you think if I knew I would tell you?’

‘Then let me warn you against getting too immersed in this case and forgetting the realities of modern-day policing. I want you to update Detective Irwin with whatever leads you develop. And don’t get so personal that you forget what’s what. Be careful of jeopardizing your career and the reputation of this police force.’

‘My job is to seek out the truth and bring justice to those who break the law.’

‘Just remember, Daly, you’re a police officer, first and foremost.’

*

After the meeting, Irwin followed Daly into the corridor.

‘A good performance in there,’ said the younger detective. ‘That ought to buy you a few more days on the case, but nothing more.’

Irwin’s eyes looked angry, but calm had settled over Daly.

‘Rest assured,’ continued Irwin, ‘this is my show, my circus, and the whole thing will be packed up and gone within a week – less, if I can manage it. And what will you do then?’

‘Wait for the next circus?’

‘If this were the old police force, they’d have booted you out long ago.’

‘The same police force that colluded with the enemy, I presume?’

‘Here’s a short history lesson for you, Daly. We weren’t at war with Loyalists. We were fighting the IRA. Given the provocation, I think the RUC carried out their duties with great composure.’

Daly could have said more, but Irwin’s intensity repelled him, and he no longer felt like goading him. His mind had settled on a different target and he walked away. In hindsight, it was easy to see the truth in what Irwin had said. Daly understood the corrosive effect of repeated IRA attacks and bombs, how they might paralyse not only the security forces but also the individual lives of many police officers, souring ambition, darkening minds, sapping the will to uphold law and order to the most rigorous standards. Moreover, if there had been a secret committee operating through the RUC it had undoubtedly betrayed many honest, hard-working police officers.

After the meeting was over, Fealty reached his hand up to his collar, loosened his top button and pulled off his tie. He slipped it into a drawer and leaned back in his seat. He listened to the distant siren of a police car speeding off to an emergency and, closer by, the sounds of muffled steps in the corridor and someone coughing. He sighed and lifted a thin file from his desk. He held it in his hands without opening it. For a long time, he sat there staring at the windows in an unfocused way, dimly aware of the raindrops pattering against the glass. It had been a bleak, strange day made doubly odd by Daly’s revelation about his mother. The conversation had tired him, but it had also stimulated his memory, dredging up old images from the past.

As his mind turned over almost-forgotten incidents, the emptiness of the room began to daunt him: the blankness of the white walls, the lack of any filing cabinets or shelves, the absence of any mementoes or souvenirs from his long career, as though his office was nothing more than a hollow container for the light from the windows and his lonely figure. Not for the first time since moving to the new headquarters, he felt like an invisible guest in an anonymous hotel.

The paleness of the walls added to his tiredness. Perhaps it was the smell of fresh paint. He gripped the file as though it was all he had managed to salvage from his old office at Armagh police station, a building that had once been at the centre of Walsh’s murder triangle.

He understood that the new headquarters had been erected to lead the police force into the future, rather than carry the burden of the past. All those branching corridors and clean, ordered rooms, which he hated, as if architecture might offer an elaborate means of forgetting where you came from, the mistakes you made, the unfinished business of unresolved crimes.

Unfortunately, in spite of the best efforts of the police chiefs, the past still loomed. It was undeniably powerful and close. He had felt its force in Daly’s revelation, and he held it in the slim file. It demanded attention and loyalty, but loyalty to the past meant betraying the present and the principles upon which the politicians had founded the new Northern Ireland. This was the difficult choice he now faced.

He sighed heavily and stared at the photograph of the elderly spy on the cover. Daniel Hegarty. He was surprised that the informer had returned to border country, like an old dog marking the territory of his youth. History moved in strange ways. Northern Ireland had gone through a peace process, decommissioning, elections for an Assembly, the country slowly evolving towards a brighter, more peaceful future, but every now and again there were setbacks. Something came along that threatened to dismantle all the years of progress.

For most of the 1980s and 90s, Daniel Hegarty had been a pivotal agent working for British Intelligence within the IRA. He had probably saved dozens of lives, but also been implicated in just as many murders. For informers like Hegarty, there was no such thing as courage without some form of betrayal, and it was inevitable that they became entangled in criminality. Fealty reasoned that if Hegarty was about to blow the lid on all his terrorist crimes as an agent of the state, it could be argued that the future peace of Northern Ireland was at stake.

I am doing the right thing
, he reassured himself as he leafed slowly through the pages.
How could I behave any differently?
The scale of priorities outweighed the plight of one lonely detective like Daly. Special Branch had lost one round to Hegarty, but the game as a whole would be theirs. They would come out of this with something more important, a smokescreen to hide the most unsavoury deeds of the past. All he had to do was stage-manage the hunt for Hegarty and his eventual capture. To do so would mean breaking some of the most fundamental codes governing intelligence work. However, Hegarty had left them with no other practical solution to the problems he posed and the power he wielded. The changing political realities of the country dictated that the spy should be sacrificed for the greater good of society. Sometimes betrayal required more courage than loyalty.

He removed a flash drive from the file and attached it to his computer. He opened the video file he had been watching that morning. It was the footage from the hotel CCTV cameras taken the day before.

Fealty had developed a fascination with the grainy images of Hegarty’s lonely figure – the way he sat slumped in the hotel chairs, his balding head as he walked through the foyer, clutching a glass of whiskey at the bar, his face always lowered, carrying the same briefcase wherever he went. Fealty followed his limping figure, watching him wander seemingly invisible in the wedding hubbub. At times, it was like tracing the movements of a little boy weaving his way among grown-ups, or an old man lost among children. Fealty tracked his movements again through the sequence of cameras. The spy seemed to follow the secret path of a sleepwalker’s dream, picking his way through the throng, from the bar to the reception rooms and into the foyer, the crowds forming and dissolving around him, oblivious to his presence.

Fealty froze the video at the point the young woman entered the bar. Her face was only ever in profile and half-covered by her hair, but her pose was unmistakable, her shoulders straight, and her head held high and haughty. That bloody reporter, he thought. What was she doing there? What leads to a story was she sniffing out? Journalists like Jacqueline Pryce were dangerous because they tended to follow the most poisonous of secrets, the ones that had the potential to become the scoop of the year. He watched her as the crowds milled past the bar. He would have liked to see more of her facial expression, to determine what was going through her mind, but her features were always averted, her head tilted slightly as though she was watching someone.

Several times, he replayed the moment Pryce and Hegarty made contact. He crouched over the screen hunting for a telltale clue, a chance to lip-read what they were saying, a glimpse of her face. His tension increased, a helpless, deep-seated anxiety. He watched the briefcase; the two of them clearly meeting as strangers; the confident flick of her hair; Hegarty’s limp and look of consternation. They were messages that he interpreted as a summons from the dangerous shadows of the past. He would have liked to ignore them, but to do so now would be to condemn himself to inaction.