Dark Dawn (19 page)

O’Neill stopped and laughed quietly to himself. ‘That’s pretty serious for half eight in the morning.’

Sam didn’t flinch. ‘So that’s why you’re a peeler?’

‘This is me. This is what I know.’

She held his gaze, and after a few seconds excused herself and went to the toilet. O’Neill left money for the bill. Afterwards they stood in the car park, hesitant, not wanting to go their separate ways.

‘That was good,’ O’Neill said.

‘Yeah. I had a really good time.’

They paused, neither sure what to do. Shaking hands seemed naff.

‘We should do it again,’ Sam said.

‘Yeah. I’d like that.’

Before O’Neill could move she stepped in and kissed him on the cheek. He had sat over breakfast, watching Sam eat, wondering what it would be like to put his mouth on hers. He tried not to show his disappointment at the kiss on the cheek. It was something, after all. Sam turned and walked towards her car. She didn’t look over her shoulder, but got in quickly and drove away.

O’Neill smiled to himself as he walked out of the hotel car park. He wasn’t thinking about anything: not Laganview, not the boy, not the dead ends he’d spent most of last week chasing. His phone rang in his pocket. It was Musgrave Street so he answered.

‘DS O’Neill. It’s Chief Inspector Wilson.’ The voice was angry. The Chief Inspector had taken to calling every morning and every evening, piling on the pressure, giving O’Neill daily reminders that the case was going nowhere.

‘Can you tell me why—’

O’Neill spoke into the phone. ‘Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?
Hello!’

He switched the phone off, staring at the handset. There was a bin next to his car. He thought about it, but decided not to and got into the car, tossing the phone on the passenger seat.

‘Fucking twenty-first century.’

Friday morning at Musgrave Street and Doris was on the front desk. She’d spoken to Ward as he made his way through reception.

‘I think your boy is getting pretty close to the edge.’

Doris had been around long enough to see cases ruin detectives. It was the pressure, the obsession. Young guys trying to prove themselves but not realizing they were playing with a dud hand. The only thing to do was to fold and wait for better cards. An hour earlier O’Neill had walked past, looking as if he hadn’t slept for a fortnight.

Upstairs, half-drunk cups of coffee lay dotted round CID, a present from the nightshift. O’Neill sat between two stacks of folders, not looking up when Ward entered.

‘Still not handed in your homework, Detective?’

‘The dog ate it.’

Ward knew from Doris that O’Neill had been in well before his shift started. He’d probably spent half the night looking through files he’d sneaked home, thinking no one knew.

‘Grab your coat, son.’

‘How come?’

‘Because I’m the Inspector and you’re the Sergeant. That’s how come.’

Ward grinned as O’Neill threw down his pen and stood up.

‘You know, someone once told me something,’ Ward began.

‘Yes, Obi-Wan Kenobi?’ O’Neill replied.

‘If you’re in the shit, best thing to do is start throwing some. When everyone else is covered in it, you won’t feel so bad.’

‘So where are we off to then?’

‘We’re gonna throw a little shit.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

***

It was just after 11 a.m. when Lynch approached The George. His doorbell had rung at 9.30 that morning. It was one of the local kids who couldn’t have been more than ten years old.

‘Mr McCann wants to see you. Told me to give you this.’ The kid passed Lynch a bullet, a 9mm copper round. ‘Said it was time to bite the bullet.’

Lynch looked at the kid who smiled back, pleased at remembering his lines.

‘He made me learn it, so he did.’

Lynch imagined McCann making the kid repeat it back to him. Gerry McCann, the great educator.

McCann used The George as an impromptu office. Lynch had been summoned and told to be there at eleven. Before leaving the house, he took the Browning from the shoe-box under the bed and was about to tuck it into his trousers. He knew they’d pat him down though and a pistol wasn’t the kind of opening gambit you wanted with McCann. He knew he didn’t have much choice and put the gun back under his bed.

As Lynch approached the bar he saw Sean Molloy and one of his boys standing outside smoking. McCann was definitely inside. Molloy had two black eyes and a bandage across his nose. Lynch kept his head down and walked through the double doors into the bar.

Molloy had taken almost all Lynch’s attention as he walked up to the George. Not so much though that he didn’t notice the two peelers, parked at the end of the street in an unmarked Mondeo. He wondered if McCann’s boys had sussed they were there. From the two outside smoking, it didn’t look like it.

In the Mondeo, Ward was mid-sentence. ‘When we get in there, just follow—’

He stopped as he saw Joe Lynch approach the doors to the bar. O’Neill was reaching for the handle when Ward put an arm across him.

‘Hold on a minute. That was Joe Lynch just walked in there.’

‘Who’s Joe Lynch?’

‘Before your time. He did ten years in the Maze. They put four bodies on him but the word was there were a hell of a lot more. Let’s hang back a minute. The question is, what’s Joe Lynch doing with Gerry McCann?’

The George didn’t officially open until midday. McCann sat at the back, near the emergency exit. Lynch crossed the threshold and saw a few figures, dotted around, waiting. No one was drinking. A man stepped forward and put a hand to Lynch’s chest, looking him up and down before frisking him. To Lynch’s left sat two men in black leather jackets. One of them looked at him with a blank, pitiless stare. Pat down over, the man nodded and pointed at a seat.

Molloy walked into the pub and took up a stool near the door. He made eye-contact with the men in leather jackets. Lynch wondered if he had been set up but he put on an air of indifference, pretending to be oblivious as he planned an exit strategy. There were two doors. A lot of bodies at the front, so it would have to be the back. There’d be someone in the entry as well, although he wouldn’t be ready. Lynch would be on him before he knew what was what. Then he’d be away.

McCann sat at a table at the back of the bar, talking to Johnny Tierney. He handed over a white container the size of a car battery.

‘Three parts of this, to one part of the good stuff.’

Tierney smiled. ‘What’s it this time?’

‘Don’t you worry what it is,’ McCann laughed, shaking his head. ‘These fuckers round here will snort anything.’

Tierney joined in the laughter and handed the cutting agent to two young fellas in tracksuits. The three of them walked from the back of the bar, stopping to speak to Molloy before leaving.

The man who had frisked Lynch signalled that it was his turn. Three stone overweight, McCann sat before a large Ulster fry – eggs, sausage, bacon, fried soda, fried potato bread.

‘Joe Lynch. I was beginning to think that you didn’t like me.’

McCann pointed his knife at the plate. ‘Best fry in the whole of Belfast. Or so they tell me. Wife says these things’ll kill you. But sure if the Brits never managed it, what chance have a few rashers got, eh?’

McCann laughed at his own joke. The
bonhomie
was all part of the show, acting like he didn’t have a care in the world. The Master of the Universe, all under control. Lynch kept his guard up. With McCann you were only one wrong word away from getting your throat slit. Back when he was nineteen, McCann tea-bagged a guy, putting eight holes in him with a flick-knife, in the toilets of Durys in Blackstaff Square. The guy had offered to buy McCann’s bird a drink. He didn’t know who she was, let alone that she was with McCann. The club was full but not a single person came forward to the police. It was how things were.

‘So how are you enjoying being back, then?’

‘Fine.’

‘Having a bit of trouble sleeping, I hear.’

McCann raised an eyebrow. Lynch wondered who he had been talking to. Dr MacSorley? Marie-Therese? No. His house was being watched.

‘Bit sad, don’t you think, lying awake all hours. Is it nightmares? Have you tried sleeping with the light on?’ McCann laughed sarcastically. ‘Are you lying there thinking about your wee cell back at the Maze? Wishing you’d never got out? Liked doing your time for the Cause? Our Joe, the big martyr. Do you want your war back – is that what it is?’

Lynch didn’t answer. McCann hadn’t done a day inside so what the fuck did he know.

‘Do you want to know why it is that you can’t sleep?’

Lynch remained silent.

‘It’s because you’re not doing anything. And I’m not talking about walking round, going to the shops, getting on like an auld housewife. You need to get busy, get yourself involved, get the blood pumping, the juices flowing. Men like you, Joe, men like me – we can’t just sit around.’

McCann put a piece of sausage in his mouth and chewed it slowly, thinking.

‘Let me tell you a story. When I was a wee lad my da took me up to Bellevue Zoo. We were going to see the lions, the tigers, everything. I was so excited, I wouldn’t shut up in the bus the whole way up the Antrim Road. I’d seen them on TV, chasing zebras, hunting antelopes, attacking buffaloes. When we got there though, it was shite. There was this big lion, sitting there in his cage, just staring out. He no more looked like he could kill you than our neighbour’s cat. All day long he just sat there. Rocking back and forth, like some mental patient in Purdysburn.’

McCann pierced a bit of soda bread with his fork and pointed it at Lynch.

‘I don’t know the kind of shit you’ve heard. Peace Process. New Northern Ireland. The Assembly.’ He paused. ‘It’s a load of balls. Meanwhile you’re pacing back and forth, staring out of the bars of a cage you don’t even know you’re in. Is this what you did ten years for? A shitty wee house and a portable TV – is that what it was all for? All the time, all the jobs, all the sacrifice?’

Lynch remained expressionless. Inside he was on fire. Partly it was sitting there and being lectured on sacrifice by someone like McCann. The other part was hearing McCann voice some of his own thoughts since he’d returned to Belfast. Maybe the man was right. Who was he kidding, walking round, trying to pretend he was normal? How many normal people had the thoughts he had? Still, he wasn’t a criminal. He knew that. Thatcher had tried to tell them they were criminals. Ten men had died on hunger strike proving her wrong. No food for forty days. Death by starvation. They had shown her what real willpower was.
That
was discipline.

Lynch slid his chair back and made to stand up.

‘Where the fuck do you think you’re going?’ McCann raised his voice. Along the bar one of his men got up from his stool.

‘Sit the fuck down. I haven’t finished with you.’

Lynch looked down the bar. The man who had frisked him stood where he was. He sat down as McCann loaded his fork and shovelled it into his mouth. He chewed slowly, showing Lynch he was in no rush. He could keep him there as long as he wanted.

‘You owe me,’ McCann said.

‘How do you figure?’

‘The fucking punchbag sitting at the end of the bar – Molloy. He hasn’t worked for a week. The peelers have been on him like flies round shite. That’s bad for business. Costs me money.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Aye, dead on,’ McCann said sarcastically. ‘You’re going to do a bit of work for me. Pick up a package and deliver it. There’s five hundred quid in it for you. Take the money, treat that wee tart you have your eye on, take her out to dinner or something. She’ll be sucking your dick by the end of the week.’

Lynch stared at McCann.

‘Aaagh, stop being so fucking sensitive, will you? We’re all men here. She’s a good-looking bit, or at least that’s what the boys tell me. A bit young for you, mind, but sure, who the fuck am I to say?’

‘I’m not interested.’

‘I don’t give a shit if you’re interested or not. Molloy’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’s a mean fucker once he gets an idea in his head.’

‘Come again?’

‘Don’t play the innocent with me. It didn’t work when the RUC grabbed you ten years ago and it’s not going to work now. Molloy’s young. He hasn’t been round the block as many times as me and you. He doesn’t know it takes a special kind of person to do what someone did to him. A person with patience. A person who can follow a target for days, weeks even. A person who can bide his time, wait until things are just right. Who can do a job and then vanish. Who doesn’t need to sit in a bar all day, boasting about what he’s done.’

Lynch sat in silence. McCann looked into his eyes. He had only been half-sure before, but meeting Lynch again, face to face, erased any doubts.

‘And sure, Joe,’ McCann lowered his voice, ‘if none of this interests you I can always send the boys round to that wee slut of yours.’

‘I don’t even know her. She’s nothing to do with anything.’

McCann shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s not my problem.’

He ate another piece of sausage, chewing slowly before pointing at his mouth.

‘Cookstown sausages. Really good. You should try some.’

The two men sat in silence.

‘Who knows, Joe, you might even like it. Get the taste back. If you do, there is always work. Anyway, you’ll be picked up outside here at two on Thursday morning. Now fuck off till I finish my breakfast.’

Ward and O’Neill watched Lynch walk out of The George. He put his hands in his pockets, turning in the opposite direction from the Mondeo.

‘Forget McCann,’ said Ward. ‘He’ll be an easy find when we need him. Let’s have a word with Joe Lynch. Find out what he’s doing so far from home.’

At the end of the street Lynch looked left into the oncoming traffic. He crossed the road and headed down May Street, towards the city centre. Ward started the car and O’Neill jumped out on foot. May Street was busy with cars. O’Neill took out his mobile phone, dialled Ward and held it to his ear. He looked like any other office worker, nipping out to grab a sandwich. Lynch looked over his shoulder at the traffic, then crossed to the other side of the road before turning down Joy Street.