Dark Circles (25 page)

CHAPTER 60

Big George Carroll had disappeared off the planet. Well maybe not the planet but Peter Davidson and Eric Taylor were ready to conclude that he was no longer in Belfast. In fact, mention of his name was enough to strike most of the denizens of the Loyalist drinking holes of Belfast deaf and dumb. Now Big George, possibly because of his size, was usually not the most difficult man to run across, but nobody had seen hide or hair of George Carroll for days. Peter Davidson was at school with both Sammy Rice and Big George. A lot of the kids had treated George like the village idiot, and Davidson had watched as George had failed to advance in class with the other children. Sammy Rice had gone ahead with the other kids but at each play break he immediately made for George, and the two would get up to whatever mischief Sammy had thought of during class. Davidson had delayed heading for the one place that he knew for certain there was someone who knew where George was. Mrs Carroll had a pathological hatred of the police. Her family had been involved in criminal activity as long as Loyalists had lived in the Shankill. Her father and brothers had spent time in jail for a series of offences which ran the gamut of crimes that could draw a prison sentence. The family had often protested that they were being incarcerated for political offences, but the plain truth was that they were criminals, born and bred. Clare Carroll lived in a red-bricked maisonette in Riga Street. Davidson knocked on the door and stood back.

Mrs Carroll’s large frame filled a crack in the door and looked at Davidson. ‘You have some nerve coming around here, you traitor,’ she said.

‘Nice to see you too, Mrs Carroll.’ Davidson creased his face in a fake smile. ‘I’m looking for George. We want to have a talk with him.’

‘And if he doesn’t want to talk to the Peelers.’ She held the door open just enough to look out.

‘It isn’t optional,’ he said.

‘He’s not here,’ she said and attempted to close the door.

Davidson blocked the door with his foot. ‘It would be better if I found him. We don’t want the uniforms looking for him. Someone might get hurt.’

‘I’ll tell him you were lookin’ for him.’ She pushed hard on the door.

Davidson’s foot was throbbing. ‘George might be in trouble, Mrs Carroll. He really should come and talk to us before it goes further.’

‘When I see him, I’ll pass on the message.’ She pressed so firmly on the door that Davidson’s resistance crumbled. He pulled his foot from the door and allowed it to close.

She knows where he is, Davidson thought. Ideally, he would like to watch her and see where she went but this was the Shankill and if he was seen standing around, it would stir up the local heavies. He’d have to hope that George would surface and that he would be in the vicinity when he did.

CHAPTER 61

‘So it’s a dead end.’ Wilson had listened to Moira’s report on her conversation with Feinstein. ‘Everything hinges on Carroll.’ They were travelling in the car to the Infrastructure Agency offices in Central Belfast. ‘This is like walking around in glue. The more we advance the more we seem to get stuck. I’ve asked for an international arrest warrant for Baxter and Weir. Sooner or later, we’ll catch up with them. When we do, we can reappraise the forensics, and maybe we’ll find something that links them to the crime scenes. Otherwise, the only person who can place them in both Malone’s and Grant’s residences is Big George Carroll.’

‘What’s the plan with Healy?’ Moira asked.

‘We shake his tree and see what falls out,’ Wilson said. ‘We don’t have the expertise to follow up the corruption angle. Our speciality is murder, and I think we’ve already sorted out who killed Malone and Grant. We don’t yet know why. The hypothesis that involves the Agency and the link with Robin Construction is only that, a hypothesis. We don’t have a shred of evidence to confirm it. It might be different if we could find the missing computers. There wasn’t a shred of evidence in any of their homes to indicate that they knew each other. We have to assume that Baxter and Weir cleaned up.’

‘Baxter and Weir didn’t do O’Reilly,’ Moira said. They had arrived at their destination, and Moira pulled into a ‘no parking’ spot.

‘Eric is going through the CCTV from Castle Street. The place is awash with cameras but there’s a lot of it to go through. Eventually, we’ll pick something up.’ Wilson got out of the car and looked up at the impressive office building. ‘At least we know where some of the money is going.’

They walked together to the reception and asked for Dr Healy after showing their warrant cards. They were shown to the lift and met at the sixth floor.

Healy stood as the two police officers entered his office. ‘Sergeant McElvaney, back so soon.’ He moved forward with his hand extended.

Moira smiled and shook his hand. ‘Let me introduce Detective Superintendent Ian Wilson.’

‘My pleasure.’ Healy extended his hand to Wilson. ‘I’m old enough to have seen you play at your best. You were a class act.’

‘Thanks.’ Wilson shook Healy’s extended hand. ‘It’s nice to be remembered.’

‘In your case it’s easy.’ Healy led them to his desk. When they were seated, he moved behind his desk and sat. ‘Now how can I help you?’

‘We haven’t gone public yet, but we believe Brian Malone was murdered,’ Wilson said. He noted the shocked look on Healy’s face. ‘I’m sure you’ve read about David Grant’s murder.’

Healy nodded.

‘We believe the two murders are connected, and that’s why we’ve come to you,’ Wilson said.

Healy looked confused. ‘Brian, murdered. It’s very hard to take that on board. Who would want to harm someone like Brian?’

‘We have a good idea about the “who”,’ Wilson said. ‘What we’re concentrating on is the “why”. People don’t get murdered for no reason, that’s why motive is so important in our business.’

‘I don’t understand what that has to do with the Agency.’

‘We have a hypothesis that I’d like to run past you,’ Wilson said. ‘Let’s say that Brian Malone discovered something in the course of his work that smelled of corruption. We can further posit that he took whatever he discovered to David Grant who was known as being strong against corruption. We can now go further and theorise that this hypothetical information could possibly form the basis of the motive for the murder of Malone and Grant. You can probably see where I’m going. This hypothesis suggests that there’s something rotten in the Infrastructure Agency.’

Healy was a whiter shade of pale. ‘Have you considered that your premise may not be valid?’

‘It is one of several lines of enquiry,’ Wilson said. ‘Perhaps you can help us either disprove or confirm the hypothesis I’ve just outlined.’

‘How?’ Healy asked.

‘We’ve been looking into your operations,’ Wilson said. ‘Finance and operations are not our area of expertise, but we’ve noted some issues which need clarification.’

‘If I can clarify them, I will,’ Healy said.

‘A company called Robin Construction appear to have been very successful in obtaining building contracts,’ Wilson said. ‘In fact they have been successful in eighty per cent of their tender applications.’

‘Our tender procedures are set down by Government for all public tenders,’ Healy began, comfortable now in lecture mode. ‘In fact, PSNI is obliged to follow the same tender procedures. The tenders are submitted on a certain date, opened and a list of the tenderers drawn up. All tenderers can be present at the tender opening session. After the list of valid tenderers has been drawn up, the tenders are examined for compliance with the TOR.’

‘TOR?’ Moira asked.

‘Sorry,’ Healy said. ‘Terms of reference, the compliant tenders are then examined for their technical ability to complete the project and the tenderers are marked on their technical capabilities. The final step is to open the financial proposal. Any unsuccessful tenderer can ask for a meeting to discuss the area in which their tender was lacking. The process is totally transparent. If Robin Construction has been very successful, it’s because their tenders have been the best and the most complete.’

‘Have you examined the ownership of Robin Construction?’ Wilson asked.

‘Our tenderers are required to provide us with the past three years’ profit and loss account.’ Healy said. ‘And a list of contracts undertaken in that period. We only deal with bona fide companies who have a track record. Robin Construction would never have succeeded in a tender if they didn’t fulfil these requirements. Overall ownership of the company is not an issue for us.’

‘So it wouldn’t be important’, Wilson said, ‘if it transpired that Robin Construction was owned by a Belfast criminal and a shadowy investor with a registered office in George Town in the Cayman Islands.’

‘That would not be an issue,’ Healy confirmed. ‘I don’t have the papers in front of me, but Robin Construction was obviously compliant in the tender procedure, presented valid technical proposals and their bid was the most economical.’

‘And you’ll stand by that?’ Wilson asked.

‘Absolutely,’ Healy replied.

‘And political influence plays no part in the allocation of contracts?’ Moira asked.

Healy smiled as though he was dealing with someone who hadn’t quite understood what he had said. ‘The process is transparent. Any political interference would be instantly visible.’

Wilson stood. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Dr Healy. And we’ve taken up far too much of your time.’

Healy stood. ‘Would you mind if I asked you for an autograph, Superintendent?’ He took a blank sheet of paper and a pen from his desk.

Wilson took the pen and paper and scribbled his signature. ‘Thanks again,’ he said handing back the paper.

They left Healy’s office without speaking and climbed into the lift.

‘So,’ Moira said. ‘We’re no further ahead.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Wilson said. ‘That guy was smooth. And clever, we were interrogating him but he found out a lot of what we were thinking. I think that you’ll find the lights on in this building until very late tonight and that bags of shredded material will be on their way to the furnace by early tomorrow morning. Brian Malone might have found something but by tomorrow the chances of that happening again will be substantially reduced.’

‘So we’ve had it,’ Moira said opening the car door.

‘We’ve had it since this thing started.’ Wilson sat into the car. ‘Whatever conspiracy is behind this has been around for a long time. The murders were a sign of panic. Someone screwed up. Malone got lucky and roped in Grant who roped in O’Reilly. Malone and Grant had no idea that they were signing the death warrant of the next man in the chain. We’re into full cover-up at this point. Baxter and Weir are expendable because they have no idea what the whole affair is about. Big George is a danger because he can lead us to the next link in the chain, Sammy Rice. We get Rice, I have no idea where that might lead us.’

‘So Big George is the priority,’ Moira said.

Wilson leaned back in his seat. ‘I haven’t seen the letter,’ he said finally.

‘You’re twenty years behind the times,’ Moira said. ‘It’s all done by email these days. You’ll find it in your inbox under the subject “Application for a leave of absence”.’

‘You know how many emails I get in a day.’

‘I would have thought you considered it important.’

‘I thought you were resigning.’

‘Never burn your bridges.’

‘What are you going to do in Boston?’

‘Since I won’t have a Green Card, I can’t apply for the police. Brendan can arrange for me to follow some courses on criminal psychology. Since I already have a degree in psychology, it seems like the way to go.’

‘What about work?’

‘I’ve got some money saved so this is like a sabbatical. ‘

‘I don’t see you being on sabbatical for too long.’

CHAPTER 62

Sammy Rice spent the day getting high and drinking. He wasn’t happy about ordering Big George’s death but it was a business decision and George was a liability that had to be removed. The Peelers were locked on to Baxter and Weir. They would have CCTV that would link them to George, and George would squeal like a stuck pig as soon as they had him in the interview room. It was the difficulty of using someone who was all brawn and no brains. He hadn’t forgotten that Boyle was a link between Baxter, Weir and him but since no one had any idea where Baxter and Weir were, he had time to organise Boyle’s demise. He had remained compos mentis enough to burn the laptops they had collected from Malone, Grant and O’Reilly. Those laptops and the information they contained were now a mass of charred plastic moulded together in some weird sculptural form. The whole business was a cluster fuck. The basic problem was that the people who ran Jackie had got greedy. They were the kind of people that wouldn’t be happy making thousands if they could make millions, or millions if they could be making billions. Another hitch was that he had no idea who they were. He smiled. If he did have that knowledge, he might be tempted to take them out. He was the one who fronted up the construction company, but they were the ones who were pocketing most of the cash. He took out his mobile phone and called Boyle for what seemed like the fiftieth time. The phone rang out. He’d told Boyle to call him as soon as the job was done. Boyle was supposed to have a brain. It bothered him that his lieutenant hadn’t obeyed his instructions. That fucker was living on borrowed time anyway. He took out his watch. It was four thirty. They’d left at 9 a.m., and Tullymore wasn’t a million miles away. He cut two lines of coke with his Barclaycard. No point in worrying. Big George was history and one link in the chain had been erased.

Ballymena was a large town in County Antrim with a population of almost 30,000 souls.
The casual visitor was left in no doubt as to exactly who controlled the town. The Loyalist paramilitary banners hanging from almost every lamppost were a dead giveaway. Most of the kerbstones in the town were painted red, white and blue, the colours of the Loyalist majority. Union Jacks fluttered from bedroom windows. Pictures of King Billy and masked Loyalist gunmen stared down from the gable walls of terraced houses.

Big George Carroll had long ago finished his Maud’s cream cake, and his stomach was rumbling as he left the M2 motorway at Exit 26 and followed the sign for Antrim/Ballymena/Coleraine. He was still unsure about what had happened in Tullymore but he was certain that he was a very lucky man to be still alive. He didn’t like to think of Owen Boyle’s head looking up at him from the ground. His mother and Uncle Ray would have the answers. They had the brains to put all the pieces of the jigsaw together. He would never be able to believe that Sammy was part of the plot to kill him. He and Sammy were friends since school. He had maimed and even killed people because Sammy had asked him to. He turned onto Lisnevenagh Road and drove the seven miles ahead to the Antrim Road. He turned onto Bridge Street. He was almost at his destination. Uncle Ray lived in a small townhouse in Waveney Avenue. Big George knew the area well and parked the BMW in the small cul de sac. He looked at his watch. It was four thirty in the afternoon. He had called his mother from the southern outskirts of Belfast, and she had told him that she would be waiting at Uncle Ray’s when he arrived. He locked the car and knocked on his Uncle Ray’s door. The door opened, and he was pulled inside.

‘You weren’t followed,’ Ray Wright asked. He was a tall, red-haired man in his early sixties and one of the few men that George would allow to manhandle him. Wright looked at the shirt tied around George’s head and suppressed a smile. ‘Take that thing off and let me see the damage. You look even more of an edjit than usual.’

George started to remove the shirt from his head. The section directly over his destroyed ear was caked with blood and resisted being pulled away.

‘Your mother’s in the kitchen,’ Wright said. ‘We need to clean you up a bit before she sees you.’ He led George to the bathroom and turned on the hot tap. He balled up a towel and soaked it in hot water then dabbed it against George’s left ear.

George stood still. His threshold for pain was way beyond what Wright was doing to him. Gradually, the piece of shirt he had torn from Boyle’s dead body came away and the extent of the damage to his ear was revealed. His left ear was reduced to a piece of red pulp. No amount of surgery was going to fix it.

‘You’re one lucky bugger,’ Wright said examining the ear. If Boyle had been a better shot, he would have taken half his nephew’s head off. ‘Let’s go talk to my sister.’

Clare Carroll sat at the kitchen table smoking. She’d stubbed out her cigarette when she heard the doorbell. She was waiting anxiously to examine the damage to her son. She was a child of the ‘Troubles’ and had seen torn and broken bodies before. But this was her only son, the boy she depended on to put food on the table. She knew that he was still in one piece, but she was hoping that his ability to take care of her had not been impaired. She looked up as her brother led her son into the kitchen.

George looked at his mother. He half-expected that she might cry when she saw that his left year was missing. However, she seemed unruffled. George moved his eyes to the two men sitting at the kitchen table beside her. He recognised Gerry McGreary and Davie Best.

‘There he is Clare,’ Wright said. ‘He’s as right as rain. Mind you, they’ll have to change his nickname from “Big George” to “One ear George”.’ He smiled at his little joke. He turned to George. ‘Mr McGreary and his associate are anxious to have a word with you. First, they want to know what happened in Tullymore. Sit down beside your mother, lad.’

Big George sat beside his mother She put her hand on his. ‘Mr McGreary is here to help us, George. Tell him what he wants to know.’

Big George started to recount the events of his day. He went into great detail and Ray Wright was about to stop him when he received a look from McGreary that said leave him alone. After a long discourse, George stopped. He looked at his mother. ‘I didn’t mean to kill Owen. He was my friend, but he shouldn’t have tried to kill me. I only wanted to stop him from shooting at me.’

‘Can you find the place where you buried him again?’ McGreary asked. He ran protection, prostitution and drugs in Central Belfast. Like Rice he had been born and raised in the Shankill and had always wanted to control that area. At the end of the ‘Troubles’ the Loyalist paramilitaries had, like their Fenian counterparts, gravitated to what they knew best, crime. Rice and his family had grabbed West Belfast for themselves and that had pissed him off. He had been forced to settle but deep inside, he always wanted to get rid of Rice. The Cummerford bitch had done him the favour of putting Lizzie Rice in a hole in the ground, and old Willie was too busy pickling his liver. Sammy was the de facto boss of the Rice empire. He was the one McGreary would have to get rid of if he was to become the number-one man in Belfast. Big George Carroll was the second present that had fallen into his lap that day. He had always considered Richie Simpson to be an arsehole and he’d proved it when he’d gone to the Fenians to recruit a killer for Sammy. McGreary had guessed, correctly, that Simpson hadn’t the nous to come up with the idea of killing Sammy. That idea was way beyond Simpson’s level. So the order had come from somewhere above and that probably meant Jackie Carlisle. And everybody who knew anything knew Carlisle was only a boy for the powers that be, the people who really ruled Ulster. If they wanted Rice dead, they might be grateful to the man who accomplished it for them. Simpson and Big George were a gift from God. And Gerry McGreary had learned never to spurn either a gift or God.

‘Yes,’ Big George said.

‘Do you know why he tried to kill you?’ McGreary asked.

Big George shook his head, making bits of loose flesh swing from his destroyed ear.

‘The Peelers are scouring Belfast for you, son,’ Clare Carroll said. ‘You must have done something.’ She was going to add ‘think’ but realised she shouldn’t ask too much of her son. ‘Boyle wouldn’t have tried to kill you unless Sammy had told him to do it.’

Big George couldn’t think of any reason why his best friend since school days would want to kill him. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown that man out of the window in Castle Street. But Sammy told me to do it.’

McGreary and Best looked at each other.

‘And Sammy was with you when the man went out the window?’ McGreary asked.

George nodded. ‘He told me to throw him out and I did.’

McGreary nodded at Wright. ‘Your nephew has had a busy day. He must be tired. Maybe you should let him rest in the front room.’

Wright stood up. ‘Come on, George. I’m going to put on the telly in the front room and you can rest. I’ll put your favourite cartoon channel on. I have to discuss things with Mr McGreary and your mother.’

Big George stood up and looked at his mother. She motioned him to follow his uncle.

McGreary turned to Best. ‘Get on to the quack in Finaghy. We need to get that boy’s ear fixed up. I have no idea what they’re going to do to it but it’s the least we can do. Alright, Mrs Carroll?’

‘Thank you, Mr McGreary,’ Alice Carroll said. ‘You’re a gent.’

Wright returned to the kitchen. ‘He’s watching the cartoon channel. He should be good for another hour. Between Rice and the Peelers, the poor boy is fucked. Rice can’t leave him alive, and the Peeler’ll have him for doin’ that boy in Castle Street.’

‘There may be a way out,’ McGreary said. ‘The Peelers’re aware that George isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. They’ll live with a story where he was told by Sammy to toss the boy out the window. But if Sammy is there to contradict him, then it’s one man’s word against another. Sammy will buy the best legal brain in town that means he’ll skate. And George will take all the heat.’

‘But George would never do something without Sammy telling him,’ Clare Carroll said.

‘Tell that to Owen Boyle,’ McGreary said. ‘You know your boy, Mrs Carroll. Put him in an interview room and the Peelers will have his whole life history in an hour. Including the part where he decapitated and buried Owen Boyle in Tullymore Forest.’ He looked directly into Clare Carroll’s face. ‘You’ll never see him on the street again. You’ll be in the cemetery before he gets out.’

Ray Wright was following the conversation. He had been a Loyalist paramilitary commander, and he was nobody’s fool. He looked at his sister. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I think Mr McGreary has a way that it won’t happen.’

McGreary removed his wallet from his pocket. He peeled off two £50 notes and handed them to Clare Carroll. ‘Why don’t you go into town and buy yourself something. Your son might have to go to jail but he’ll have the best brief that money can buy, and you’ll be taken care of while he’s away. When he gets out he’ll come and work for me.’

She smiled as she took the money. ‘What about Sammy?’ she asked.

McGreary patted her hand. ‘You leave Sammy to us.’

Clare Carroll put the money into her purse and left the room.

The men in the kitchen waited until they heard the noise of the front door closing.

Ray Wright looked at the other two men. ‘Okay, Gerry, what do you have in mind?’