Dark Circles (26 page)

CHAPTER 63

‘Boss,’ Eric Taylor almost jumped in the air as Wilson and Moira entered the squad room.

Wilson went immediately to Taylor’s desk.

‘You got to see this.’ Taylor indicated the images on his computer. ‘I’ve been going through the CCTV from every camera in the vicinity of Castle Street. Look what I’ve picked up.’

Wilson stared at the image on the screen. Two figures, dressed in black, were moving along Castle Street heading in the direction of Royal Avenue. They both wore woollen hats pulled down over half their faces. ‘I can’t see the faces. Can you give me a shot where I can identify them?’

‘They don’t want to be identified, Boss,’ Taylor said following them down the street. ‘The hats are pulled down and they keep their eyes on the ground. That’s not the point. The one on the right is a man mountain. Who do we know that looks like that?’

‘Big George Carroll,’ Wilson said. ‘If that’s Big George, the other one must be Sammy Rice or one of his men. It all fits. O’Reilly weighed ninety kilos. Big George can probably bench press several hundred kilos. He could pick someone like O’Reilly up with ease.’

‘And toss him through a window with equal ease,’ Moira said from behind Wilson. ‘It’s all beginning to centre on Big George.’

‘Where do they go from Castle Street?’ Wilson asked.

‘They disappear on Royal Avenue,’ Taylor said. ‘They cut into Berry Street where there are no cameras.’ He turned and looked at Wilson. ‘That’s Big George. He was in Castle Street when O’Reilly went through the window. It’s one hell of a coincidence.’

‘It’s no coincidence,’ Wilson said. ‘O’Reilly was murdered the same as Malone and Grant. Sammy Rice and Robin Construction are behind the whole affair.’

‘Do we haul Rice in?’ Moira asked.

‘No,’ Wilson said. ‘We concentrate on Carroll. He hasn’t disappeared off the face of the earth.’

The six o’clock briefing was upbeat. A large portrait photo of George Carroll dominated the whiteboard. Wilson gave a briefing on the visit to the Infrastructure Agency and the role of Robin Construction. He had drawn lines between the Agency, Robin Construction and Carson Nominees and then linked them to Sammy Rice and George Carroll.

‘I think that we’re almost there,’ Wilson said. ‘It not about the crime, it’s about the cover-up. The crime was probably the corruption within the Agency that provided Robin Construction with a mechanism to win the majority of contracts. I’m willing to bet that all concerned made a whole lot of money. Exposing this level of corruption would be a career-maker for a minor politician like Grant. What none of them realised was that Sammy Rice was involved. Sammy isn’t very good at thinking his way out of problems. His solution was to eliminate the trio and to do it in such a way as not to arouse suspicion. What they didn’t count on was Professor Reid. O’Reilly looks like it was a rush of blood on the part of Rice. Like I said it all fits. There’s only one thing missing, evidence. We’ll get Baxter and Weir for Malone and Grant with George Carroll’s evidence. We might even get Rice for O’Reilly but again it will require Carroll to rollover and put him in the apartment in Castle Street.’

‘Boss,’ Peter Davidson interjected. ‘I’ve worn out a pair of shoes walking around Belfast today. Nobody has seen Big George in the past two days. He might have gone to ground, or he might even have left the country. I interviewed his mother. I got the impression that she knows where he is, but she isn’t saying.’

‘I know George,’ Harry Graham said. ‘He hasn’t left the country. Removing him from both Sammy and his mother would be like putting him in an airless room. He would suffocate and die. He’s still in the Province. The question is, where?’

‘What about the international arrest warrants on Baxter and Weir?’ Wilson asked.

‘I’ve prepared the papers for the DPP,’ Graham said. ‘It’ll be on the wire in the next few days. But it might take months before we get our hands on them.’

‘It all comes back to George Carroll,’ Wilson said. ‘That’s the focus of our investigation. Get me Carroll and we’ll crack this thing wide open.’

CHAPTER 64

The snug is not a particular feature of Irish pubs. Special rooms for individual patrons is a feature of bars around the world. The snug in the Crown Bar had gunmetal plates for striking matches, and an antique bell system, very common in Victorian houses where servants were employed, which alerts bar staff to the liquid needs of the patrons. Drinking snugs, according to old records, were not originally built for comfort but to accommodate those people who preferred to drink quietly and unseen. Detective Superintendent Ian Wilson wasn’t the first policeman, or clergyman, to favour drinking in one of the snugs in the Crown. As a patron for more than twenty years, his request for the reservation of a snug was always respected. He arrived slightly before seven o’clock and made his way to snug ‘J’ where a ‘reserved’ sign had been placed on the table. He ordered a pint of Guinness and waited.

Jock McDevitt was panting slightly when he pushed in the door of the snug. He sat down heavily, a film of sweat on his brow. ‘Jesus, that was a bit of a rush,’ he said and immediately pushed the bell. ‘Pint of Guinness,’ he said as soon as the barman’s head appeared through the hatch between the snug and the bar. ‘Just put my story for tomorrow’s paper to bed. Maybe I should have waited.’ He looked expectantly at Wilson.

‘It’s payback time,’ Wilson said. ‘You’ve given me a lead that panned out so I’m going to tell you a story. It’s hypothetical and I don’t have the evidence to back it up, but I think the evidence is out there and someone like you might be able to ferret it out.’

McDevitt’s pint arrived and he attacked it with gusto. ‘I needed that,’ he said simply when he was finished drinking. ‘Go ahead.’

‘It all started with the Infrastructure Agency,’ Wilson began, and he connected the dots as he had done during the investigation. He explained the role of Robin Construction and the ownership of the company. ‘We’re nearly at the end of the road. Tomorrow we’ll put out a statement that we’re looking for two men in connection with the deaths of Brian Malone and David Grant. We won’t publish the names, but we have firmly established that they’re the killers. There’s a conspiracy charge somewhere down the road, but we’re not there yet.’

McDevitt finished writing in his notebook.

‘We might never have cracked these cases if you hadn’t tipped us off on the Glasgow connection.’

McDevitt picked up his glass and toasted. ‘Glad to be of assistance, still think my little story about the Inner Circle is a fantasy?’

‘I deal with reality. It’s always easy to ascribe events we can’t explain to shadowy organisations. Half the planet has read Dan Brown and believes that Opus Dei or the Masons have their hands in every pie.’

McDevitt laughed. ‘And they don’t? You know I have always respected your intelligence, but you can’t possibly think that these organisations don’t include people who only want to use them to make money. The Inner Circle is not Opus Dei, or the Masons. It doesn’t promote religion or business contacts. It has only one God, money. It will turn its hand to anything that will make money. It’s the Mafia, but it’s our version of our Italian cousins. Opus Dei and the Masons would bend their knee to them. Who the hell do you think Carson Nominees are? Surely someone with your level of brainpower can connect those two dots.’

‘Some professor from Harvard that my sergeant spoke to seems to think that we’ll never find out who’s behind Carson Nominees. Maybe that’s where you come in.’

‘Are you joking? I’ve been at this game twenty-five years, and I’ve dealt with as much scum as you. One thing that I’ve learned is that you don’t step into the lion’s cage. These people would chew me up if they had any inclination that I was interfering in their business. You remember that journalist who was looking into Maggie Thatcher’s son’s connection with the Pinochet regime. He was found dead in a Santiago Hotel. The conclusion of the coroner was that he wanked himself to death.’

‘What a way to go.’ Wilson couldn’t contain a laugh.

‘Yeah, it’s funny but it happened.’ McDevitt rang the bell and ordered two more pints. ‘The Circle won’t be broken easily, and if they wanted to they’d swat me like a fly. They have connections that go way beyond this Province.’

‘Then why tell me the story?’

‘You know that saying that it only needs good men to look away for evil to win.’ McDevitt stopped while the two pints of Guinness were delivered. ‘I wanted to put them on your radar. This is an organisation that has existed for over one hundred years and virtually nobody has heard of them. If they were ultimately responsible for the deaths of Malone, Grant and O’Reilly, it’s the first time in a hundred years that they’ve raised their heads above the parapet. Maybe the current crop of leadership is getting sloppy.’ 

‘You didn’t think that by putting them on my radar you might be putting me on theirs.’

‘You’re an honest copper, Ian. I think that maybe you are already on their radar.’

‘We’re off the record, right.’ Wilson waited until McDevitt nodded. ‘I think Sammy Rice was responsible for the murders of Malone and Grant and was probably in O’Reilly’s apartment when he went through the window. I intend to prove that before this investigation is over. Are you trying to tell me that Sammy Rice is a member of this Inner Circle?’

McDevitt laughed. ‘Not a chance, I have no doubt that he’s their creature. They use people like Rice to do their dirty work. They’ve learned from the cell system developed by the Communists and terrorists. Rice probably hasn’t any idea who is in the Inner Circle. He will have dealt with someone on the periphery who himself may never have met an Inner Circle member. It’s the spider at the centre of an extensive web.’

They were both silent and took a drink together.

‘If I were to believe you, I wouldn’t even bother to go to work tomorrow,’ Wilson said.

‘It’s the opposite. If you believe that the Inner Circle exists, it should be the primary reason for you to continue to solve crimes. Every time you put someone evil away or any time you put a block on one of their plans, you shake their web. Maybe they’ll come after you and that might expose them.’

‘So I should become the sacrificial goat?’

‘No, you should just do your job to the best of your ability. The belief that the Inner Circle exists just adds an additional layer to your thinking. Maybe the next time you look at a dead body, you’ll think that there might be an unseen hand behind that death.’

Wilson looked at his watch. ‘It’s time I was off.’

‘Pity,’ McDevitt said. ‘I was looking forward to an evening of getting pissed and hearing a couple of saucy rugby stories from your past. I think in a parallel universe we could be friends.’

‘I don’t do friends.’ Wilson stood up. ‘But if I did, maybe you’d be one of them. Tread easily on this Inner Circle shit. It might return to bite you.’ He opened the snug door and walked into the bar. It was like passing through the Looking Glass in reverse. What happened in the snug was the fantasy. The bar filled with the noise of chatter and laughter was the reality. Most people just wanted to have a good time and enjoy themselves. He was not so naive to believe that there were not those who seduced and sucked the life out of others like a succubus. He made his way through the crowded bar and pushed into the street. He took a deep breath savouring the smell of the city of Belfast. The air was not sweet and without pollution. He loved this city with all its faults and failings. Belfast people were some of the best in the world. They were witty, friendly and intelligent. On the flip side, they could be religious bigots and murderers. But they were all human beings. The members of the Inner Circle, if it existed, were phantoms. Figures without substance, what could they have in common with the ordinary citizens of this great city.

CHAPTER 65

Something was seriously wrong. Sammy Rice had been pacing back and forth for nearly an hour in the front room of his Ballygomartin home. He’d phoned one of his contacts in the PSNI but there were no reported accidents on the road to or from Tullymore. There was only one possible conclusion for the absence of contact. There was a screw-up. He was doped to the gills and that had increased his feeling of unease and paranoia. His mobile phone rang, and he snatched it from the coffee table. ‘Yeah,’ he said as soon as he’d made contact.

‘Sammy?’ The voice on the other end said.

Rice’s first conclusion was that this wasn’t Boyle. The accent wasn’t straight Belfast. ‘Who’s this?’

‘It’s Ray Wright,’

‘What’s the problem Ray?’ Rice had the words out before he remembered that Wright was Big George’s uncle. He and Wright were tight during the ‘Troubles’. Sometimes he’d had Wright’s back, and often it was the reverse. They hadn’t been in contact for several years.

‘Big George is with me here in Ballymena.’

Rice said nothing. He was thinking as fast as his brain would allow. Fuck, it had surely gone pear shaped. Big George was alive and there was no contact from Boyle. It wasn’t hard to draw the conclusion that Boyle was no longer in the land of the living, or at the very least hurt so badly that he couldn’t communicate.

‘Big George wants to meet,’ Wright said. ‘He’s confused and so is his story. The bottom line is that something went wrong between him and Owen Boyle in Tullymore today.’

Rice badly needed a clear head but the cocaine was in the ascendance. If you wanted something done, you had to do it yourself. Boyle was given a fairly simple task and he’d fucked it up. Rice put on his calm voice. ‘I sent those two muppets to Tullymore to bury something. What happened?’

‘Not on the phone, like I said we need to sit down and go through this thing. Maybe you can make sense out of Big George’s story.’

‘I’ll come to your place in Ballymena.’

‘No. George wants to be with his mother. We’re coming to Belfast.’

‘I’ll wait for you in Ballygomartin.’

‘Not on, the Peelers have been scouring Belfast for Big George today. They even went to my sister’s house. The Peelers want him and it seems they want him badly.’

Rice knew that Wright wasn’t lying. ‘What do you have in mind?’

‘There’s a warehouse in East Belfast that you use sometimes.’

‘The one in Ballymacarrett Road?’

‘That’s the one. We’ll meet you there in an hour. Come alone. Big George is a bit skittish. What with the Peelers looking for him and what happened in Tullymore.’

‘Tell him we can work this out. We’ve been friends since we were able to walk. I’ll sort out the thing with the Peelers no matter what it costs.’ 

‘I’ll tell him. He knows he can count on you. We’ll see you in an hour.’ Wright broke the connection.

Rice sat down and held his head in his hands. It was all going to shit. Boyle screwed up. Big George was alive and well and wanted an explanation for whatever happened in Tullymore. He had one hour to come up with something that would be believable. There was only one possible story that would wash. It was all Boyle’s idea. He had wanted to get close to Rice and realised that Big George had the inside track. So he decided to off Big George. He himself knew nothing of Boyle’s plan. Wright and Big George might buy that story, but that would still leave George alive and kicking with the Peelers on his tail. Forget the fucking story. He needed Big George dead and there was only man he really trusted to handle the job. Himself. He walked to the mahogany desk in the corner of the living room and opened one of the drawers. He took out a Beretta 92 automatic. It was his pride and joy. A beautiful weapon that only the Italians could have designed. He checked the magazine and smiled when he saw it was full, fifteen rounds of 9×19 mm Parabellum. That would be plenty enough to take out Big George and his uncle. In a few hours, his remaining problem would be floating in the Lagan.