Silence (8 page)

She walked into the room and he edged in behind her. A disco had started on the floor below and the heavy music reverberated in the room.

The old man sitting on the bed had been flicking through a travel magazine. Hegarty entered the room, and the man looked up, his eyes glittering with a dangerous light.

‘Hello, Daniel,’ he said. He sounded happy to have company.

‘Where’s Walsh?’ asked Hegarty.

‘He couldn’t make it. What’s in your briefcase?’

‘It’s empty. You can see for yourself.’

Hegarty tossed the briefcase towards him. It splayed open in mid-air. The man grabbed at it, when he should have recoiled backwards for cover. Quick and deft, Hegarty pointed the gun. The weapon flared twice, the bullets striking the man in the neck and the top of his chest. The briefcase clasped shut and fell on his body.

Hegarty walked stiffly towards him. The dying man’s eyes fastened on him with an intensity that suggested they had once known each other, the muscles of his jaw convulsing while blood poured from a wound in his neck. His throat lengthened and grew rigid, as though he were trying desperately to say something.

‘I thought you had retired,’ said Hegarty, finally recognizing him. He was one of the shadows who’d been watching him for years. A man who had assassinated many innocent victims.

‘Yes,’ hissed the man through a mouth frothing with blood, but his eyes were already clouding with forgetfulness. His body fell to the side.

Hegarty delivered a final bullet to his head, and turned his attention to the journalist, whose entire body had frozen to the spot.

‘This will do wonders for my writer’s block,’ she said hysterically, her eyes signalling some strange sort of relief. And then she laughed, but it was a silent laugh, more a ghost of a laugh. Her reaction made him pause for thought. By the time he raised the gun to shoot she had slipped out of the room and into the corridor. He followed her and fired. Her run faltered and she glanced back at him with a pained look. To his surprise, she started running again, this time limping heavily. The bullet must have grazed her leg. He was about to raise the gun and take aim again, when a family with young children emerged from a room into the corridor.

He ducked back into the room. In the mirror, he caught a glimpse of his face spattered with blood. By the time he had washed and re-emerged, the woman had gone.

A mess of blood filled the bed. He checked the dead man’s body, careful not to get any more blood on himself. The black wedge of a gun jutted from an underarm holster. He searched the room for any evidence that might link him to the killing. Already there was too much blood on the carpet. He was careful where he walked, what he touched. For the first time that day, he felt relaxed, transposed into another more vital existence. He picked up his briefcase and left the room. He was no longer contemplating his own death.

After leaving the abbey, Daly felt too troubled to return home. He decided to phone ahead to the hotel Walsh had been staying in and arrange a search of the deceased’s room. As he drove back into border country he tried to think of a series of events that would have led to his mother becoming a target for Loyalist paramilitaries. He arrived at the hotel without having made any progress.

Clary Lodge Hotel was situated at the bottom of a black mountain, half-hidden behind an enclosure of laurel and rhododendron bushes. It had once been the mansion of a grandly delusive English landlord, who’d wanted to turn the emptiness of the surrounding bogland into a visual spectacle. When Daly pulled up in his car, he thought that in winter few landscapes could have presented a gloomier prospect to travellers.

However, the hotel seemed busy with the aftermath of what must have been a wedding party, parked cars festooned in white ribbon, young children colliding with each other, and groups of well-dressed men and women standing at the doors, grabbing a smoke between drinks. They steered clear of Daly as he approached, as if they knew exactly what he was, a portent from the outside world, a carrier of bad news.

The receptionist at the front desk was not facing the entrance; he was turned towards a computer screen and speaking into a telephone. Daylight flickered against the wall. From the corner of his eye, Daly caught the silhouettes of children bolting past the windows. The front doors banged open and shut. A man appeared out of the shadows, kneading his forehead. After several minutes, Daly cleared his throat to get the receptionist’s attention.

‘My name is Inspector Celcius Daly,’ he said.

The receptionist turned to regard him, placing a hand over the receiver.

‘They warned me you were coming.’

‘I need to search a room. It was booked by a priest called Walsh.’

‘You’ll have to wait a moment.’ A frown shadowed the receptionist’s face. He continued talking on the phone. The coolness of his manner irritated Daly.

‘Father Walsh died last night in unusual circumstances,’ he said, leaning over the counter in anger. ‘I can arrange for the details of the hotel to be circulated to the media as a key to the mystery of his death. You’ll have the press here taking pictures and interviewing guests within the hour. If that’s what you prefer?’

‘Absolutely not.’ He looked aghast. ‘That’s not the type of publicity we want.’ He replaced the phone. ‘I was wondering why Father Walsh seemed to be hiding from everyone.’

‘Who’s everyone?’

‘There was a woman and a man enquiring about him. He missed some sort of meeting. What was your name again?’

‘Inspector Daly. When did you last see him?’

‘Yesterday morning at breakfast time.’

‘How did he seem?’

‘Fine. Like any other guest at that time of the morning.’

‘What room had he booked?’

‘Follow me and I’ll show you.’ He led Daly up a wide staircase to the second floor. ‘His room has the best views of the nearby mountain,’ he said.

A fine prospect for a dead man’s last day, thought Daly. A drove of children had converged upon the top of the staircase. They pointed down at Daly and the receptionist as though they were figures of fun. It must have been difficult finding something worth giggling at in such dismal surroundings.

The receptionist swiped the door lock with a card.

‘That’s odd,’ he said, pushing open the door. ‘It’s unlocked.’

They walked into a darkened room. Daly sensed something throbbing within, a swarming presence. When his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he made out a tired-looking carpet patterned with dark congealments. For a long moment, they listened to themselves breathe. Whatever it was that Daly had expected to find, it was not this. Someone had turned the room into a pit of red. He turned on the lights and saw that it was blood staining the walls and the blankets on the bed. Only the light shade dangling from the centre of the ceiling had escaped the spattering.

Outstretched by the bed lay the body of a man, the source of all the blood. Daly walked with small steps, careful not to disturb any evidence. He approached the bed and saw that the bloodletting had been arterial and catastrophic. He stared at the body, an elderly man with sunken features, the blankets around him swamped in blood. Methodically, he scanned the bedclothes and floor for anything the murderer might have dropped. He glanced at the victim; his mouth contorted in a grimace and his head tipped forward, blue shadows forming around his drained features. The window hung slightly open. Laughter and squeals of children playing on the lawns rose against the curtains. A car pulling away spat on the gravel drive.

Inside the room, the eddies of silence deepened. The dead man’s blood had dripped from the corners of the duvet and pooled on the carpet. Daly felt a slight weakness in his knees. The silence was broken by the sound of a mother and her two young children walking along the corridor, the happy babble of girls’ voices ringing clear as a bell. The mother flashed Daly an inquisitive look as she passed the doorway, and then, glimpsing the room, her attention swiftly withdrew. Daly turned and saw the receptionist bent in two, retching into the tiny sink.

Daly returned to his search. He found a driving licence lying half under the bed. He could make out part of the surname without touching it. ‘McClintock’, it appeared to read. On the bedside locker sat a copy of the bible and the priest’s breviary. Father Walsh’s presence lurked in the room like a ghost with gruesome secrets.

Daly told the receptionist the name of the dead man.

‘Was he a guest?’ he asked.

‘I’ll have to check the register. He might have come for the wedding.’

Daly grimaced at the idea of questioning the bridal party. He hoped for their sakes that the bride and groom had already escaped on their honeymoon.

The receptionist had left the sink and was watching him from the door, his face inclined in an attitude of enquiry, as though he believed Daly had already worked out what had caused the violent events that had unfolded in the room.

What had he worked out? Very little. He tried to gather information, make some sense of the grisly scene. The pathologist’s report would pinpoint the time of the victim’s death and reveal if it had occurred before or after Walsh’s car crash. With the help of the scene-of-crime officers he would analyse the body and the room, place them in some sort of stable context, but for now, his detective skill of selecting relevant details was overwhelmed by the proximity of so much blood, the rawness and violence of it all. He heard the sound of a lift opening echo along the corridor.

He was standing in a hotel room about ten miles from the Irish border, submerged in a reddish haze.

The receptionist tried to slip away.

‘Strictly speaking, my shift ended about ten minutes ago,’ he said hoarsely.

Daly glanced at his watch.

‘You can stay a little longer. I should have clocked off an hour ago.’

Back at headquarters the following morning, Daly and Detective Irwin walked up a flight of stairs and down another long corridor. The polished floor gave way to carpet, and a hush descended. Special Branch Inspector Ian Fealty greeted them with a frozen smile and led them into his office, which was spacious, but filled with a heavy, cold light, the walls bare of anything that might soothe a troubled mind. Behind Fealty, a set of windows gave bleak views of the lough shore’s flooded hinterland. Rain drummed lightly against the glass, adding to the sombre mood in the room.

Daly worked out he was in a north-facing wing on the third floor, a section he’d never visited before. The architecture of the building seemed to have the ability to sprout a new wing or two, then mysteriously disappear, and on more than one occasion he had found himself lost amid its avenues of corridors. He surveyed the room and the views from the window, thinking that this was the little summit the Special Branch chief had managed to clamber up, his new lair from which he could overlook all the entanglements of the past.

Fealty seemed at home in his new surroundings. He dipped his head and indicated Daly a seat, while Irwin stood to the side. Daly was surprised to see Donaldson standing there, too, his eyes fixed on him, unblinking and severe, like the portrait of a family ancestor.

‘Coffee?’ asked Fealty.

‘No, thank you.’

‘This will not take much of your time, Inspector,’ said Fealty. ‘Irwin has explained to me your interest in Father Walsh’s death. On this occasion, let me be very clear about how this investigation will proceed. Fortunately for you, it is very straightforward. With McClintock’s death, the case has reached a new level. Any further discoveries or leads are a matter for Special Branch and the intelligence services. Your intervention has been invaluable and we convey our thanks to you. Of course, you will undertake not to disclose any of the information you have discovered to anyone else.’

Fealty regarded Daly with a measure of anticipation. His eyes met his, alert to every nuance of physical communication. Daly stared back. That icy gaze of Fealty’s. Always calculating the precise degree of professionalism in its targeted object. Daly took care not to blink.

‘So,’ said Fealty, picking up a pen, allowing his words to fall as matter-of-factly as the rain against the window. ‘We have your agreement on this?’

‘I’m sorry. I can’t agree to that.’

‘Why not?’ asked Fealty.

‘You haven’t explained why the investigation should be handed entirely to Special Branch.’

Daly had encountered Fealty’s strong-arm tactics before, while investigating the disappearance of a former Special Branch agent with Alzheimer’s. He and Fealty often shared the same investigative territory, but carried out their police duties in parallel, only overlapping in cases of political sensitivity. He had doubted from the start that the hastily arranged meeting would be one of mutually beneficial revelations.

Fealty sighed.

‘Very well, I shall explain to you the rationale behind our decision. We’ve identified the body in Walsh’s hotel room. Ivor McClintock was a former police officer, a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. In 1984, he was convicted of supplying weapons to a Loyalist paramilitary group and served a one-year jail sentence. At the time, he was not a serving police officer, I hasten to add.’

‘What was he doing in Walsh’s bedroom?’

‘It appears that Walsh had an unhealthy obsession with the past. He was working on a conspiracy theory, and had been interviewing McClintock about his links with Loyalists and the police.’

Fealty swallowed as if trying to overcome a deep-seated reservation. Was he about to break the taboo of Special Branch family history and mention the dreaded word ‘collusion’? Daly stayed silent, allowing a strategic pause to develop.

‘Walsh had come up with new allegations of a cover-up at the highest levels with regards to a series of murders in the late 1970s,’ added Fealty. ‘He levelled accusations at MI5 and the higher echelons of Special Branch.’ He smiled thinly. ‘If there was such a cover-up I don’t think it could have escaped the attention of the media and the legal profession for over thirty years.’

It was revealing in itself that Fealty hadn’t been able to say the word ‘collusion’ aloud, even within the confines of his own office, thought Daly. Only the guilty or ashamed relied on euphemism rather than the blunt truth.