Dark Dawn (30 page)

‘OK. The test takes a couple of hours to run. I can probably have a result for you by lunchtime.’

‘A couple of hours? I thought this was the twenty-first century?’

‘It’s the twenty-first century, not
Star Trek.’

‘Fair point. Listen, thanks for doing this. I appreciate it.’

‘I’ll get it done and call you as soon as it comes back and I’ve run the comparison.’

O’Neill spent the rest of the morning walking the corridors at Musgrave Street, punctuated by drinking cups of coffee and smoking in the car park. He had been pacing up and down outside CID when Ward stopped him.

‘Are you digging a trench in that lino?’

O’Neill forced a pained smile.

‘Go and sit down somewhere. You’re making me dizzy.’

He had pulled a name and address for the bouncer from Mint’s Inland Revenue returns. Ivan Walczak. He was Polish and had been in Northern Ireland for three years. He lived at 56 Glandore Avenue, a two-bedroom terrace house off the Antrim Road.

At noon O’Neill couldn’t wait any longer and called Jordanstown.

‘You know, Detective, you’ve got even less patience than my wife.’

Despite his desperation, O’Neill liked that Bradley was making fun of him. It meant he had another friend in Jordanstown – and you never knew when it could come in handy.

‘The results are just back. I’m running the cross-check. Give me ten minutes,’ Bradley said. ‘And
I’ll
phone
you.’

O’Neill sat at his desk looking at his watch. It had been twelve minutes. He sighed, tapping his hand on the telephone handset.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.

The phone beeped and O’Neill snatched it up before the first ring had time to end.

‘O’Neill!’

‘Good news, Detective. I’ve got two exact matches. A cigarette end and one of the samples lifted from the kid’s clothing.’

‘Thanks,’ O’Neill said, banging down the phone. He stood up and marched out of CID, shouting as he passed Ward’s door.

‘This is us. Let’s go.’

O’Neill and Ward stood at the back of the armoured Land Rover. They had on bulletproof vests and Ward had had to suck in a breath to get the Velcro round his.

‘I’m too frigging old for this.’

O’Neill adjusted his own vest, feeling reassured by the weight of the Kevlar.

They had assembled a couple of streets away to suit up and brief uniform before taking the door. They had three patrols with them, one for the assault team and two for either end of the street.

In the back of the wagon the uniform listened as O’Neill ran through the drill. There was an air of giddiness. O’Neill stamped it out, pointed to each man in turn and demanded to know if he’d taken a door before. They all had. Earlier, O’Neill had caught himself looking at the officers’ footwear. All four were wearing black canvas Magnums. He tried not to think about it.

O’Neill took control, telling them that once the place was secure, they’d all need to step out. The plan was to bring in the dogman and go room-to-room. Ward and O’Neill then climbed up into the Land Rover, shouting at the driver to go.

As the white vehicle rumbled along the street, one of the uniforms, Terry Carson, leaned over to the man next to him. He had to shout above the noise of the engine.

‘Kicking in doors. Love it, fucking love it!’

The other man nodded, a nervous smile.

On Glandore Avenue two kids on BMXs stopped riding and stood watching in silence. On the opposite side of the street a curtain twitched and a nosy neighbour shouted to her husband, ‘Come here and see this!’

The front officer banged on the door, shouting ‘Police! Open up!’ He stepped aside and immediately the heavy steel battering ram began blasting the door. Normally a door popped on its first or second hit. Walczak’s took six. It had been reinforced and triple-bolted. Each blow made a deep, medieval noise.

When it popped, uniform piled into the house, shouting, ‘Police!’ at the top of their voices. They fanned out into the rooms, three running up the stairs. From the front door O’Neill heard shouts of, ‘Clear, clear, clear . . .’ as each room was secured.

He cursed under his breath. No one was home.

After a few minutes uniform slowly backed their way out of the house. Ward had reminded them beforehand that it might be a crime scene, and that the first man to touch something would be on foot patrol for a year.

O’Neill and Ward let the dogman in, trailing a small brown and white spaniel, its tail wagging as if it had never been happier in its life. The dogman pointed at things, opened cupboards and ran his hand under furniture. The spaniel sniffed its way round the house, in seeming ecstasy. Near a chest of drawers the dog suddenly stopped and sat down, looking up at its master. The dogman gave a treat and had a quick rummage through the drawers but couldn’t see anything. It might only be a trace on the clothes. He turned to O’Neill, making sure the detective had seen it before he moved on with the dog. The spaniel stopped and sat three more times but each time the dogman couldn’t see anything obvious. Once the spaniel was back in the van he came to talk to O’Neill.

‘This place is definitely hot. Or at least it was, not too long ago.’

O’Neill thanked him and went inside, starting a room-to-room search. The kitchen cupboards were sparse, containing tins and jars with various foreign labels that he didn’t recognize.
Dzem. Makrela. Pinczow.
Walczak lived alone and there was no sign of a woman, something O’Neill confirmed when he went through the clothes upstairs.

In a living-room cupboard Ward found a 12-inch bowie knife and an improvised baton, made from heavy-duty cable, twisted and held by masking tape.

‘Nice guy,’ O’Neill muttered, holding up the weapons.

The bedrooms didn’t contain much and only had the most basic furniture.

‘This guy lives like a monk,’ he said to Ward on his way out of the bedroom.

The first sweep found nothing and O’Neill had gone back to the four spots where the dog had sat down. He still couldn’t see anything. He bagged the clothes from the chest of drawers, some more forensic evidence for his new friend Robin Bradley.

Then O’Neill went back and started over at the front door. He went from room to room again, this time going through the litany of secret spaces, the secluded hiding spots that every criminal thought he was the only person in the world to have thought of. He checked the carpet in the corners, listening for loose floorboards. He pulled back the side of the bath and lifted the cistern. He tore apart the beds and pulled kitchen units away from walls. He sliced open the sofa and felt up the chimney. With each new empty space, O’Neill could feel his chest tightening.

Under the floor in the cupboard, he got his breakthrough. It wasn’t drugs, it wasn’t a gun. It was better.

O’Neill lifted out a shoe-box and called Ward in from the next room. He placed the box on the bed and slowly took off the lid.

Inside were a couple of photographs. One was a picture of some soldiers in full combat gear, their faces blacked up. They were crawling through a forest and looked to be on some kind of training exercise. In another picture, a group of three men stood side by side. They looked lean and menacing, all with shaved heads and black combat uniform. Again their faces were camouflaged but O’Neill could make out Walczak. On the back of the photograph were the letters
WS RP,
followed by
Wojska Specjalne Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej.

‘What do you want to bet WR SP is Polish Special Forces?’ O’Neill asked Ward.

‘Looks like it to me.’

The box also contained a plastic bag with at least twenty
SIM
cards for mobile phones. He’d be switching
SIM
cards all the time to make it difficult to trace his calls. At the bottom of the box were six passports, all of them Polish. O’Neill flicked through them, expecting a series of false identities for Walczak. They weren’t. They belonged to different people. In each one the face of a young man, no older than sixteen, was framed in a 1-inch passport photo. O’Neill held the fifth passport in his hand, showing it to Ward. It was their victim.

‘It’s him.’

O’Neill read the name.
Jacob Pilsudski.
He was from somewhere O’Neill had never heard off. Pomorskie. Born 11 December 1989. He was sixteen years old.

‘Yeah. That’s him all right,’ Ward said. He picked up the passports and flicked through them.

‘They’re all Polish,’ O’Neill said. ‘They’re kids. He has them dealing for him. He takes the passports off them – a bit of extra security. That was why he knee-capped this one after he killed him. He knew we’d end up running round in circles, chasing after anyone with a paramilitary past. Shit, it’s not as if there’s a lack of suspects for something like that.’

‘So what now?’ Ward asked.

‘Mint. It’s our last chance.’

O’Neill and Ward swung by Musgrave Street and swapped the black Mondeo for an unmarked white van. It belonged to the Proactive Unit but Ward pulled rank and commandeered it.

At half four they parked up in Waring Street and waited. They had a clear view down Henry Street and into the Cathedral Quarter. Halfway down the cobbles were the doors of Mint. O’Neill knew this was the only thing to do now, wait and hope. They’d closed Walczak’s door and left two units hidden at either end of the street in case he came back. There was a good chance a neighbour had seen the action and tipped him off though. If that was the case he’d go underground and try to slip out of the country. The airport, ferry and train stations had all been put on alert and a picture had been circulated. A description had been sent round the entire PSNI with officers instructed to stop and search anyone resembling.

They needed to be lucky. O’Neill thought about everything he’d done over the last month, the hours he’d spent sifting the case-file, sitting outside Burke’s, staking out The George, chasing Joe Lynch. And still it came down to luck. He needed a bit of luck to get Walczak. How did that work? How was that fair?

He looked at his watch for the third time in ten minutes.

‘Will you stop looking at your frigging watch?’ Ward said.

‘I seem to spend my life sitting in cars. Waiting.’

‘Hey, that’s the job. If you haven’t figured that out by now, you never will.’

O’Neill shifted in his seat trying to get comfortable. The van smelled of stale crisps and cigarette smoke.

‘This thing reeks,’ he said.

‘So would your car, if you spent twelve hours a night sitting in it.’

O’Neill watched pedestrians walk down Waring Street. At the bottom of the road a couple of men stood smoking outside the Northern Whig. The bar had opened a few years ago in the former newspaper offices.

‘So tell me, Detective,’ Ward asked. ‘How do a bunch of Polish kids end up dealing on the streets of Belfast?’

‘Same way Belfast kids do. It’s about money. All they’re doing is working. Trying to get by. Doing what it takes.’

‘And what about our friend Walczak?’

‘He’s involved with somebody. A middle man. There is no way the local boys would have allowed him to set up shop on his own. He controls the door to one of the biggest clubs in town though. The customers come to see you. A guy that’s on coke will drink all night. He’ll never get pissed, never pass out. If the place is making a killing over the bar, everybody’s happy. It’s one big party and everyone’s winning.’

‘So what about Joe Lynch and Gerry McCann?’

‘Good question. I don’t know.’

‘And Burke? Spender?’

‘They’re dirty. Up to something. How it all fits is another question.’

The clock on the car ticked forward. O’Neill reckoned the doormen came on at seven and as it got closer he could feel his legs starting to itch. Ward was gazing out the window, trying to figure out who would be at O’Neill’s Review Boards . . .

O’Neill tapped on his arm. He looked up and saw Walczak illuminated in the doorway of the club. He was with the same man as the previous night. Both wore dark suits and long black coats. Business as usual.

‘Is this that karma stuff you were on about?’ Ward asked, arching an eyebrow.

The two detectives got out of the car and started walking down the cobbled street. Neither man looked at the door, trying to pretend they were a couple of guys, out for a pint and a spot of food.

Walczak glanced down the road, saw O’Neill and instantly took off. He leaped down three steps and sprinted down the alley, away from the cops.

O’Neill ran after him, shouting over his shoulder to call it in. Ward grabbed his radio.

‘This is 571. Officer in pursuit. Requesting immediate back-up. Suspect is five ten, shaved head and black coat. Heading up Henry Street in the direction of St Anne’s.’

Ward then took off after them, cursing. ‘More bloody running.’

O’Neill was already 100 yards away before Ward got going. Walczak had made it to the end of the lane and crossed Talbot Street, turning right down a narrow alley. A thought suddenly came into O’Neill’s head – this guy could run all day. He’d read a book about some British SAS guys who had been caught behind enemy lines in Iraq. They just put their heads down and ran across the whole country, trying to get away.

O’Neill pumped his arms, oblivious to the burning in his chest. At the end of the lane he turned right and his feet slid out from under him. Leather shoes on greasy cobbles.

‘Bastard!’

His right leg hit the ground hard. O’Neill saw Walczak turn a corner 20 yards away. He scrambled up and took off. Back-up was on the way. All he had to do was stay on top of him. They turned down Exchange Street, Academy Street. O’Neill was gaining on the doorman. The latter’s heavy coat wasn’t helping his cause. By the bottom of the lane they were only a few feet apart.

The bouncer slowed to turn the corner and O’Neill dived. He managed to get Walczak round his legs and both men hit the ground. The doorman was strong and turned, punching the cop in the head. O’Neill had hold of a foot and clamped his arms around it.

Walczak stood up, unfazed by the peeler’s hold on him. He leaned down and punched O’Neill in the face. The detective clung on. Walczak punched him again, trying to make him release his grip. He then leaned back, lifting a boot and bringing it down hard on O’Neill’s head. He lifted it and did the same again.