Nothing but Memories (DCI Wilson Book 1) (2 page)

             
“Yes, boss, I’ve got that.” Whitehouse said through clenched lips. “But I’m still willing to lay odds that it turns out to be our Taig friends.”

             
Wilson wiped the rain from his face. “I’ll grant you that this looks like an execution. And I don’t mind telling you that I’m shit scared of this case already. Most of the terrorists you and I know would need a machine gun to be sure of a kill. This one smells like a professional hit. Given the delicate political situation we have at this moment in time there’s going to be a lot of heads looking over our shoulders on this one. So let’s play it cool. No mentions of the IRA until we have something concrete. And I mean very concrete.”

             
“The bastards’ll never admit it. No claim, no blame. That the game they’re playin’.”

             
Wilson sighed. Whitehouse had been his second-in-command for the past five years and he was well aware of his sergeant’s dislike for the terrorists of the IRA. Wilson himself hated all murderers whichever side of the religious divide they came from. But Whitehouse was a firm believer that the only way to solve the IRA problem was to shoot six hundred Republicans overnight. Whitehouse was in good company. However, the Peace Process was rapidly turning yesterday’s terrorist into to-day’s politician. It had happened all over the world so why should Northern Ireland be any different. Nelson Mandela, Robert Mugabe, Jomo Kenyatta, Yassar Arafat, the list went on and on. Now the names of the most prominent IRA and UVF men would have to be added to it. That might stick in the throat of men like Whitehouse but there was little or nothing that they would be able to do about it. Wilson could feel the rain penetrating the neck of his suit. The top of his jacket would be getting a soaking but his vanity precluded him from putting on the hood which hung over his upper back. He would have to get out of this weather soon or he would be in the same condition as the poor man under the canopy.

             
“I want to cover all the possibilities on this one,” Wilson said. “Whoever pulled the trigger knew what he was doing and he definitely didn’t want the victim to survive. My guess is that the second and third shots was for insurance but any fool could see that the first bullet had done its business. That means it could be drugs or some kind of vendetta which carried over from the past. I want to know everything there is to know about that man on the pavement. I want to know his name, where he lived and whether he was ‘connected’ with some paramilitary outfit. I want his relatives and friends questioned. And I want every house on this road canvassed. If anyone saw or heard anything I want to know about it. Use the uniforms. Did you call in Eric?”

             
“He should be on his way,” Whitehouse said.

             
“When he arrives put him in charge of taking the statements.”

             
A smile creased Whitehouse’s thick lips. “He’ll have his work cut out. You know where you are, boss. This is three wise monkey country. Nobody here will have seen or heard anything. And if they did, they certainly won’t be telling us about it. As for SOCO,‘ he nodded at the ghosts in their blue suits. ‘Those poor buggers will be out all night looking for clues and they’ll probably come up with nothing.”

             
“That’s Eric’s problem. As far as SOCO is concerned they work on the theory that someone passing through an area always leaves a trace. Let’s not be too pessimistic. You stick with getting the information on the dead man. We’ll set up an incident room in the Squad-Room at the Station.  I’ll be Senior Investigating Officer, you’ll be my number two and we’ll make Eric office manager. We’ll hand out the rest of the work later. Make sure SOCO develop the photos of the corpse tonight and have them on my desk first thing to-morrow morning. If our friend did leave any trace when he passed through I want to know pronto.” He pulled another evidence bag containing the shells from his pocket. “Get these over to ballistics. Looks like a nine millimetre and I want to know whether the gun has been used anywhere in the Province.”

             
“Is that all,” Whitehouse said lifting his head from the notepad on which he had been writing.

             
“For now,” Wilson said smiling.

             
A door opened behind his back and an elderly woman stuck her head out.

             
“I knew it wasn’t over,” she said looking directly at Wilson and Whitehouse. “Them murderin’ bastards will never give up the gun.”

             
“We’ll be taking statements shortly,” Wilson said. “If you saw or heard anything we might catch the murderer quicker.”

             
“Faith, I’ll be no help to you. I’m almost blind and I’m as deaf as a post but if I was a man I’d get myself over to the Falls and I’d string up the Taig bastards by their balls.”

             
She banged the door closed before Wilson could make any reply.

             
He saw that Whitehouse was smiling to himself. “Looks like they’re going to have to teach people how to spell reconciliation before they can expect them to know what it’s about.”

             
The smile faded from Whitehouse’s face. “There’s a lot of people like that old woman about. It won’t end that easily.”

             
Wilson ignored the remark. He didn’t want to believe that it wasn’t over. The general population was tired of war without end and so was he. “Nobody thought to bring a couple of umbrellas, I suppose,” he said to Whitehouse.

             
“I was at a Lodge meetin’ when my bloody bleeper went off,” Whitehouse said. “I barely got a chance to pick up this bloody suit." He squirmed as though he just remembered how uncomfortable he was in the suit.             

Wilson had a bizarre mental picture of Whitehouse’s mobile phone going off in a roomful of grown men dressed in regalia and with their left trouser legs rolled up. He was aware that most of his colleagues were members of Masonic Lodges and the Orange Order. Although he had been born a Protestant he had never  been attracted by either the Masons or the Orange Lodge. Not that he hadn’t received invitations. As soon as he had joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary he had been inundated with funny handshakes and invitations of membership. But something inside stopped him from accepting. Maybe it was that old line of Groucho Marx – I don’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member- that preyed on his mind. He knew that his decision not to join either organisation had hampered his career such as it was but that was life. He owed nobody and nobody owned him.

              “I’m out of here,” Wilson said. “Before I get my death of cold.” He turned to Whitehouse. “You stay with the stiff. The Doc should be here in a minute but I don’t expect the pathology to tell us anything. Let’s have an autopsy done as soon as they can organise it at the Royal Infirmary. And don’t forget. Keep that big gob of yours shut on this one.”

             
“Roger,” Whitehouse said and started back towards the canopy.

             
Wilson walked to the police car and pulled off his plastic suit. He put on his overcoat and slid into the back seat. He'd been right about his jacket. The neck was soaked and he felt uncomfortable. A chill ran down his back but he wasn’t sure it was from the effects of the rain. He didn’t like what he had just seen. It was obviously a professional hit. He could hope that it was something to do with drugs but the corpse didn’t look like he had two pennies to rub together. No, this one looked like a return to the past and that didn’t auger well for a quick resolution. And there would be pressure. The peace between the two communities was new and fragile. Both sides were scared out of there wits of breaking it. The people of Ulster would not forgive those who had taken their hope away. The dead body on the pavement was innocuous enough, even as a victim. But if that body signified a return to violence there would be hell to pay. And right in the middle of this huge shit pit stood Detective Chief Inspector Ian Wilson. 

CHAPTER 3

Wilson opened the door of his neat semi-detached house in Malwood Park and tossed his heavy overcoat over the bottom of the banisters. Two white envelopes sat on the mat just inside the door masking the letters W and C of the word WELCOME which was still barely visible on the worn brown weave. He thought the positioning of the envelopes appropriate since his welcome in the house had always been unclear during the period Susan had been the mistress of it. He picked up the letters noticing that both had on the front the dreaded rectangular plasticated slot for his address. A major decision faced him. Did he really need the kind of aggravation that these letters were about to bring him? Deciding that he didn't, he tossed the envelopes on the tablet of the hall stand. He'd open them in the morning. Maybe.

             
The house in Malwood Park was, like many aspects of his life, a carry-over. His job in the PSNI wasn't the well thought out career decision which marked the current entrants. He was a copper because his father was a copper and what was good enough for his father would certainly be good enough for him. There could be no thoughts of University or even Teachers Training College. The pay and prospects in the old RUC were more than any young man could want. But good and all as they were, his wife had wanted more. Susan wanted the house in Malwood Park even when he knew in his heart and soul that he couldn't afford to give it to her. He'd listened to the admonishments of his parents and he bore the puerile gibes of his colleagues but he'd bought Susan the house she coveted. They lived among the bankers and the stockbrokers in the ritziest area of Belfast and somehow they'd struggled through the first few years of the mortgage with Susan's salary making up the shortfall.

             
He climbed the stairs slowly heaving with the effort of pushing his large frame up the wooden steps. God, but he was cold and tired. And wet, but mostly tired. He went into the bathroom and started to peel off his clothes. His shirt stuck to his back and he was forced to open the buttons before he could remove it. Every piece of clothing felt like it had been penetrated by the insidious cold wetness. He dumped the clothes in a heap in the corner of the bathroom and stood naked before the full length mirror. Where was the young giant of the RUC rugby team gone? He was twenty, no nearer thirty pounds overweight but his six feet four frame carried the excess easily. It was the face which looked back at him from the mirror which struck him most. The face bore the vicissitudes of life more than the body. The once lively blue eyes were dull and dead, hooded by heavy eyelids. His lantern jaw seemed to hang off the end of his long face and his once prominent cheekbones were beginning to be obscured by creeping folds of soft white flesh.

             
You need six months in the country, my boy, he spoke to his image as to some long lost friend but in his own mind he doubted whether six months would be enough to revitalise that dead face.

             
He stepped into the shower and turned the water to full heat feeling the hot droplets sting and redden his skin. Gradually he felt the warm stream wash away the cold.

             
When he'd finished showering and drying himself, he walked into the back bedroom. He had moved out of the room he and Susan had shared for the ten years of their marriage the week after she died. It had been a week of sleeplessness. He had lain in their bed each night with his eyes jammed shut waiting for sleep that never came. His mind refused to permit him to glance towards the foot of the bed where he fully expected to see a ghostly apparition of Susan standing over him reprovingly. If there was a life beyond death, Susan would know the depth of his betrayal of her. The sleepless nights finally convinced him that he should leave the room to her ghost. The cleaning lady maintained the room as a mausoleum for his dead partner. He put on his bathrobe and went into the kitchen. Food was normally something he pushed down his throat in the police canteen. He took no pleasure in eating. The fridge was as bare as usual and green mould was beginning to consume a block of cheddar which dominated the empty space around it. He removed the mouldy cheese and a beer from the fridge. After carefully cutting away the mould, somebody had told him that it was carcinogenic, he cut several slices of cheese and put them between two pieces of stale bread. It was time to switch off his mind and switch on the television. He carried his beer and his makeshift cheese sandwich into his living room and switched on the BBC. He prayed for something light hearted to appear. As the screen brightened the news reader sat staring directly at him presenting the evening news. He half listened to the catalogue of the days atrocities from the Occupied Territories, Sierra Leone and the Congo. The cheese sandwich tasted like sawdust and he had to occasionally dislodge clumps of bread from the top of his palette with slugs of beer. Bloodied and torn bodies continued to roll across the television screen making no impact on the already immunised audience. The newscaster had commented that some of the images might cause distress. Wilson wondered to whom. He glanced at his watch and prayed for the last ten minutes of the programme to accelerate. 

             
"On  the home front," the news reader continued over a picture of Stormont Castle. “The Alliance Party has renewed its demand for the setting up of a South African style ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’. Lord Alderdice said that the Commission should have the widest possible remit to examine some of the atrocities carried out during the ‘Troubles’. He believes that without the severest examination of the actions of all the parties now involved in the political re-construction of the Province, the process of healing the wounds of sectarian strife will not be fully attained. The Unionist majority and Sinn Fein have expressed themselves as being sceptical to such a development. A spokesman for the Unionist Coalition said that the members of his Party believed that there was little to be gained from raking over the events of the past. The proposed Truth and Reconciliation Commission might in fact be counter-productive and lead to a return to conflict.” The picture changed to the wet Belfast street which Wilson had left some time before. "In Belfast this evening, a man has been murdered." The camera panned across the scene of the shooting catching the PSNI officers in their flak jackets cradling their machine guns. Deep red cranial blood still stained the rain washed path. The corpse had been removed before the arrival of the television crew but the cameraman made up for the deficiency of a body by the close-up of the bloody footpath. The face of a well-known politician appeared on the screen mouthing the usual anodyne crap about 'heinous crimes and a population under threat, will this butchery never end etc.'. He had seen the same face wheeled on time after time. Perhaps only one tape existed which the television station played for every murder. He looked for the legend ‘library pictures’ on the screen but didn’t find it. "The PSNI Press Office has stressed,” the newscaster continued. ”That there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the murder was motivated by sectarianism. A team of crack Murder Squad detectives has already been assigned to the case and every avenue of enquiry would be explored.”

             
Wilson raised his beer and toasted the screen as the news reader smoothly moved to the next story. God bless the good old Press Office. Thirty odd years of practice had made them experts at passing the right message. Now was the time to assuage the fears of the man in the street. Don’t panic, folks. There certainly wasn’t a vicious sectarian killer on the loose. Don’t worry. The bad old days will never come again. It was his misses what done it. Blew his head off and then gave him another one for good measure. In a pig’s arse, he thought. Somebody had wanted that poor bastard dead and the man who had pulled the trigger knew what he was about. This wasn’t a random sectarian kill.

             
He didn't even get his ten minutes, he thought. The first sectarian killing rated ten minutes, the five hundredth ten seconds. He picked up the remote control and was about to press the off button when the weather map appeared on the screen. The satellite picture showed banks of dirty black clouds spreading from Newfoundland to Ireland. They were in for a prolonged period of `typical' Irish weather. He flicked the ‘off’ button on the remote control and watched the screen go progressively blank. There would be no solace from television. He picked up a Stephen King novel from the coffee table and started towards the bedroom. He needed a good belt of unreality.