Death to Pay (32 page)

‘Like what you see?’ she said noticing the way his eyes ran over her body.

‘Did we catch you at the theatre?’ he said ignoring her comment.

‘I was out for a very expensive meal with a man who hopes to get into my pants. You’d love to have seen the expression on his face when I was called away. All that money gone for nothing.’

‘Why are you always so blunt?’

‘Three years in the Kivus changes you forever. I don’t have to read books about living in the now. The monsters roaming around in this world already taught me to grab at what I want while I’m still able. I’ve already met some monsters face to face once, and I survived. Next time I might not be so lucky. In the meantime, there’s life, and I intend to enjoy it.’

‘It was in the Congo?’

‘Oh yes. What do we have here?’

‘Wife of one of my team. My guess barbiturates followed by a plastic bag. She had early dementia, or maybe Alzheimer’s.’

‘Mercy killing?’

‘Murder. You’ll be out of here in ten minutes. Time of death is all that interests us. It’s pretty recent.’

‘My date has gone home, and I’m still hungry. It would be a shame to waste the hour it took me to get made up. You could even take his place for the afters.’

‘Thanks but no thanks. I’m heading home.’

‘I’m dying of envy,’ Reid said and started for the living room with her bag in hand

Wilson watched her enter the house. For a second, he almost accepted her invitation. The problem was he wasn’t quite sure what he was heading home to.  He took out his mobile and called the station. If Donald Spence was still in the office, he’d need to be informed. ‘The Boss still at home?’ he asked the desk sergeant. ‘Good, tell him I’m on my way.’

CHAPTER 60

‘We are royally fucked,’ Chief Superintendent Donald Spence’s pacing had almost wore a hole in the already threadbare carpet of his office. ‘There is no possibility whatsoever that it wasn’t him.’

‘None,’ Wilson said simply. He was sitting in the visitor’s chair in front of Spence’s desk. He had gone to Spence’s office as soon as he had returned. ‘Things could get worse.’ He explained about the meeting between McIver and McIlroy.

‘You have his gun?’ Spence asked.

‘I already passed it on to forensic.’

‘I don’t believe this is happening,’ Spence continued pacing and rubbing at his temples. ‘You’ve done it this time, Ian.’

‘Hold on a second, I didn’t kill Mary McIver, and I hadn’t anything to do with the McIlroy murder, so don’t let’s get this thing out of perspective. You and I need to be on the same page here, or we really are fucked. Mary McIver was descending into Alzheimer’s, and her husband couldn’t handle it. It can easily be sold as a mercy killing. After all, PSNI officers are just human beings.’

‘And how will we sell McIlroy?’ 

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We need to talk to McIver.’

‘And if he did it?’

‘Then you and I are going to have to sit down and see how we’re going to spin it. If McIver did it, it may have been self-defence. We need to know what happened before we develop a scenario.’

‘And McIver, where might he be?’

‘Anybody’s guess, possibly off his head rambling around Belfast. We know that Sammy Rice is looking for him and there were signs of a break-in at his house. We have an APB out on him. The uniforms will pick him up sooner or later. If Sammy has him, he won’t risk harming him. McIver’s not exactly Billy the Kid. If he did McIlroy, something went seriously wrong.’

Spence stopped pacing long enough to pull a bottle of whiskey out of the bottom drawer of his desk. He pointed the bottle at Wilson, who shook his head. Spence poured himself a large measure. Glass in hand he resumed his pacing. ‘Any press present?’

‘Not when I was there. It went across the radio as a domestic. They might get interested later if it turns out to be a cluster fuck.’

‘Christ, Ian, this could finish us. Jennings will be all over this like a rash, and the fickle finger of fate will be pointing directly at us.’

‘Calm yourself, we both know that if anyone is going to pay a price here, it’ll be me. I just don’t want you to run out on me.’

Spence took a slug of his whiskey. ‘I have less that a year left before I get my pension. There isn’t a lot they can do to me so I won’t be running out on you but we’re going to need a damn good explanation for why we didn’t act when McIver went off the rails.’

Wilson pushed himself out of his chair. ‘I’ve had enough for to-day. We need to talk to Ronald.’

‘That bad,’ Kate said when she looked up from her desk into his face.

‘Worse,’ he forced a smile. He went to the desk and pulled her up from her chair. Her features were still pallid, and he hadn’t seen her smile lately. He hoped that the pallor, and the sad demeanour would leave soon.

‘I was worried about you,’ she held him tight.

‘It’s nothing that a few whiskeys won’t cure,’ he kissed her lightly on the forehead. He thought he could feel the absence of the bump in her stomach pressing against him. He reflected on the woman in the flower dress lying back in the chair at the McIver house. She entered the world an innocent. He had no idea of the journey that brought her from that innocent baby to dying with a plastic bag over her head.

Kate closed the legal papers she had been examining. ‘Ok, first the whiskey and then you’re going to walk me through it. I held dinner.’ She eased him away aware of his reluctance to let go. He looked tired. Maybe he was as tired as she was. She didn’t like to look at her face in the mirror these days. When she found out that she was pregnant, the thought of the baby frightened her. The law was her life. Wilson fitted rather neatly into that life, but she had been afraid that a child might not. She sometimes thought about her own upbringing. Helen McCann was never going to win mother of the year. She had been packed of to Victoria College as soon as humanely possible, and her mother was not exactly a constant visitor. Helen was too busy making money for herself and her friends to actually mother her. The law became her mother and father. She had no desire to inflict the same childhood on someone else. So, all in all, the miscarriage was probably not such a disaster. Perhaps she had even willed it on herself. It was not a thought she was comfortable with. She went to the bar and poured them both a liberal shot of whiskey. When she turned she saw that he was standing at the picture window looking out over the city.  She didn’t need to offer him a penny for his thoughts. Maybe his thoughts were as dark as hers. She came behind him and held his whiskey out. He took the glass from her hand and turned to face her.

‘Cheers,’ he touched his glass to hers and drank the contents in one gulp.

‘Cheers,’ she said sipping her whiskey. ‘That’s what I call a drink.’

He walked to the bar and poured another large measure.

‘It isn’t a solution,’ she said joining him.

‘There isn’t a solution. I get to swim around in a bowl of shit every day, and I’m supposed to remain sane. One of my team has been unravelling for weeks, months maybe. I don’t know. I missed it because I’m so bloody bound up in my own life. This evening he went home, fed his wife a glass of barbiturates and then put a plastic bag over her head. Have you any idea what it takes to do all that?’

‘While you’re swimming around in the shit I get to clean up the aftermath.  Yes, I do have some idea of what it takes because I have to listen to and defend the people who do those horrible things. I have to look at the reasons they set their house on fire with their children still inside. I get to hear their rambling about why they had to decapitate their partner because there was a snake coming out of their head. I get to make sense out of the senseless. I get to defend the indefensible. I feel your hurt because I’ve felt it myself. The problem is that this is the life we chose. The problem is, we’re both good at what we do.’

Wilson finished his drink and went to the bar to replenish his glass. ‘It’s all so bloody pathetic. I can still see her sitting in that chair with her mouth hanging open. I know I’m not guilty of that poor woman’s death. I even think that she might be better off. I’m just pissed that I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t see McIver unravelling to this extent.’

‘He’ll get help. Talk me though what happened and let’s see if I can help.’

He sipped his whiskey. ‘What the hell will become of us?’

‘Che sera sera, there’ll be plenty of time to worry about that. Let’s forget tonight that tomorrow we both have to get back in that bowl and swim.’

Moira was sitting in Bar 12. Brendan was late, something about a tutorial. She’d seen the way some of his female students looked at him and wondered if he was seeing someone else. She was so tired that she didn’t care. She was on her second drink, and she knew there would be more. The Fenian bitch in her was rising to the surface. She was getting the eye from two guys sitting at one of the tables. She hadn’t returned their come on looks, and she was only short of taking her lipstick from her bag and writing ‘Fuck Off’ on her forehead. After two days of ploughing through the shit of the past, she didn’t need to listen to some arsehole’s chat up line. She glanced at her watch, eight o’clock. If Brendan didn’t turn up soon, she was going to head home for a long hot bath and a bottle of wine. She had picked up a brochure from a travel company, and she laid it on the bar in front of her. She opened it at the long-haul section and looked at the photograph of a beach somewhere in Thailand. The water was azure blue and the sand a crystalline white. There was nobody on the beach, and a hammock hung from two trees in the corner of the picture. That’s what I want. No, that’s what I need. She tried to remember whether she had any holidays coming. Two weeks of nothing. The thought was so appealing that she wanted to rush out and book right at that moment. One of the guys at the table decided to try his luck. She caught him rising from his seat out of the corner of her eye, and she turned her full bitch look on him. It was enough to cause him to swing around her and look for an imaginary friend outside the front door. She smiled inwardly but kept the bitch face on.

‘I do not like that look,’ Brendan said from behind her back.

‘And I don’t like people who sneak around,’ she swivelled on the barstool. ‘Did you get tired of being adored by eighteen year olds?’

‘Tough day, eh,’ he motioned to the barman. ‘Pint of Guinness and whatever the lady is having.

The two guys who had been eyeing her were throwing dagger looks at Brendan. She decided to increase their pain by giving him a big wet kiss. ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ she said.

‘Hey, you try fighting off five or six eighteen year olds who want your body. Now that’s my idea of a tough day.’

The waiter put a pint in front of Brendan and a double vodka and a bottle of tonic in front of Moira. Brendan looked at her, and she held up two fingers.

‘I mean it’s my third,’ she laughed.

‘Don’t worry I got it,’ he sipped his drink. ‘Now tell.’

Once he had turned on the faucet, Moira couldn’t stop. She told him about Joan Boyle, ploughing through the old police files and the altercation with McIver. By the time she was finished, they needed another drink, and she motioned to the barman for a refill.

‘You’re going to feel like shit in the morning,’ Brendan said.

‘It won’t be anymore shit than I feel now.’

Brendan motioned to the barman and cancelled the drinks. ‘What have you got in the fridge?’

She laughed. ‘Who do you think I am? I’m a working girl. The fridge is empty.’

‘I’ve got a plan. There’s a store down the road. I’ll pick us up the making of Penne arabiata, and a bottle of wine. You take a hot bath, and by the time you’re finished dinner will be on the table.’

She finished the dregs of her drink. ‘I could get to love you.’ She picked up her bag unaware that on her mobile phone was the text of the APB for Ronald McIver.

Big George deposited the Peeler at the warehouse in East Belfast. Two of Sammy’s men wearing balaclavas pulled McIver from the back seat of the Volvo and carried him inside. They strapped him to the chair recently vacated by Davie Best. There were blood spots on the floor under the chair, but McIver didn’t bother with them. He put up zero resistance. He didn’t really care whether he lived or died. He was aware at some level that he had been abducted and there was a good chance he would end up in a bog hole somewhere. It didn’t matter. Mary was dead, and he didn’t have anything else to live for. He assumed he had been lifted by members of Sammy Rice’s gang meaning that they now knew he had killed McIlroy. They might kill him for that. If they didn’t, he’d be arrested for killing his own wife. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other. The lights were switched off in the warehouse as soon as the men in balaclavas left. McIver let his head fall forward. He was tired right down to his very bones. He was caught. There was nothing to fear now except death, and he had no fear of that. Maybe now he could sleep. He closed his eyes, and he saw Mary in front of him. In his mind’s eye, she was young and vibrant and alive. He slept for the first time in days, and he was unaware of how long he’d slept when he was shaken awake. He looked up and saw three men wearing balaclavas staring into his face. One of the men moved behind him and pulled his hair back roughly.

‘Tell us about Ivan,’ one of the men stood forward.

‘It was an accident,’ McIver said.  His throat and lips were dry. He was amazed at how calm his voice sounded. ‘Didn’t mean it. I only wanted to get out. McIlroy wouldn’t let me and he was going to hurt me, so I pulled my service revolver.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Gun went off. Two shots one after the other at close range. Fucking accident.’ He started laughing. ‘All this mess because of a fucking accident.’

‘Where’s the gun?’ the man asked.

‘My house. Are you going to kill me?’

Nobody spoke.

‘Please kill me. I don’t want to live. I’ve nothing left to live for.’

The man holding his head back took a carpet knife out of his pocket and looked at the man asking the questions. The man shook his head, and the carpet knife went back into the first man’s pocket.