Maxi McDowell reached across to open the passenger door, and I climbed in.
He said, ‘Set?’
‘Set.’
He was in his own car, and out of uniform. In the twenty-five years I’d known him, I’d never seen him in civvies. He did not appear diminished by them. The suit was slightly tweedy for my taste, but he filled every inch of it. He was of a generation that didn’t do workouts, from an agrarian class that seemed to inherit big bones and honed muscle. He would have made for a lethal rugby player, but from what I knew of him, he was not a team player. His was his own man, and obstinate.
He drove slowly, deliberately.
‘Relax,’ he said.
‘I am relaxed.’
I was not. I had finally been offered the last meal of the condemned man, except that it was literally a meal. A big fry-up. Patricia had picked up a bag of Joe’s sausages. I’m sure they were wonderful, but I couldn’t eat. Patricia scoffed hers down.
‘It’ll be fine,’ she said.
I nodded. ‘Did Bobby say anything?’
She’d been up earlier to take him to Joe’s.
‘He grunted a bit. He didn’t eat his breakfast either.’
‘Worried.’
‘No. Vegetarian.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since he started with Joe.’
‘Did they make peace?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice. They just got on with it.’
‘Well that’s good.’
On the step, she’d kissed me goodbye.
Properly.
I love her, but I hate her too. She keeps me hanging on. There is always hope, and then I do something wrong. It’s as inevitable as the seasons. She knows more about me than anyone else in the entire world, and still tolerates me. Though if she’d known she was about to drive to work with two million pounds’ worth of stolen cash and drugs in her boot, her kiss might not have lingered for so long. I was also kind of hoping she wouldn’t reach into the glove compartment for a sweet, in case the gun fell out.
‘Big day,’ Maxi said. I nodded. ‘Then the party later.’
‘Party?’ He glanced across. ‘Oh, yeah. The retirement. Is it your colleagues throwing it, or the Greater Belfast Association of Hoods and Heavies?’
He smiled.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘the Millers, just say your piece, get in and out quick as you can. They’re not the kind of people you want to hang around making small talk with.’
‘But you’re coming in with me?’
We had stopped at a junction. There was a car coming from the right. It was a fair distance away. He waited for it.
‘No. But they’ll know I’m there and not to take liberties. I’ll take you in. You’ll be searched, then escorted up.’
‘I’d prefer you to . . .’
‘No. They won’t talk to you if I’m there. I’ll be downstairs.’
‘In reception?’
‘It’s an old Methodist church. There’s a snooker hall on the ground floor now where their boys hang out. They’re up the stairs, what used to be the church hall. It’s divided into two rooms. They’re in the front. No windows, two desks, big-screen telly.’
‘You’ve been before.’
‘Aye.’
‘What goes on in the other room?’
‘Their nefarious business.’
I studied the traffic. After a while I said, ‘It’s very early in the day to be using a word like nefarious.’
‘’Tis,’ said Maxi.
The Shankill Road was early-morning busy. The former Methodist church still looked like a church. Big sandstone blocks. There was a glass-fronted noticeboard outside that would once have announced services and congregational events but now advertised a snooker tournament. There were fenced-in patches of overgrown grass on either side of the doors littered with Coke cans and fag butts. If God had ever been inside, he’d long since been chucked out on his omnipotent ear. Two guys who had probably never enjoyed the benefits of gainful employment loitered in the entrance. They watched us approach. Their eyes pretty much stayed on Maxi. They recognised him, of course, and seemed disinclined to skip and jump with happiness as he drew nearer.
‘Dan Starkey,’ said Maxi.
They took me into the vestibule. The doors in front were open, and I could see snooker tables, and players, and hear music. Queen. Not the one they claimed to fight for. ‘We Will Rock You’. I wondered if they had the correct licence to play it in public. I couldn’t imagine the man from performing rights admonishing the Millers.
I was patted down. Maxi stood back. He wasn’t going to be patted down by anyone.
One of the guys, in a cap-sleeve T-shirt with a cheap and chunky medallion, said, ‘You want a frame while you wait, Maxi?’ He nodded into the church.
‘Sure.’
Maxi followed him inside without a backward glance.
I felt bereft.
The other guy, shorter, muscled, Loyalist POW tattoos, indicated for me to follow him up the stairs. They seemed impossibly steep. They were well lit, probably deliberately. As I stepped on to the short landing at the top, I happened to look down. There was a single drop of blood sitting on a linoleum tile.
Drifting up from the snooker hall below: ‘Who Wants to Live Forever?’.
That didn’t help much either.
Outside the door – a small table, two chairs, two more guys. One was studying a laptop, the other reading the Sun. The one with the newspaper was stubbled, with a high forehead. He folded it and set it down and got up.
‘Starkey?’
I nodded. He patted me down again. As he crouched to check my legs, his zip jacket fell open and I saw the butt of a gun within. As he finished, I checked the other one out. He had small, darting eyes and an unnatural curl to his hair. He didn’t pay me any attention at all.
The Sun guy turned and knocked on the door behind. He waited for about ten seconds. When there was no response, he pushed it open and indicated for me to enter. I hesitated for a moment before stepping through. There were desks centre front and right. On the back wall a Union Jack. A painted but chipped wooden door was set halfway along. The other walls featured a large Ulster flag with its white background tinged nicotine yellow and various items of paramilitary and Loyalist regalia and memorabilia. This then was the headquarters of the 1st Battalion of the Ulster Volunteer Force, the paramilitary organisation formed to protect my people, but which had been abusing them ever since. The joint brigadiers of said battalion were facing me: Rab Miller, stick thin, navy shirt, casual blue jacket, perched on the left side of the desk; and behind it, in a black suit with black shirt, Thomas ‘Windy’ Miller, thickset edging towards fat with a spray-on tan, leaning forward with his arms folded. The first thought that struck me was that they had taken the ten seconds between the knock and the door opening to deliberately set themselves in this pose. They supposed they were cool and polished and intimidating, like some mutant descendants of Bailey-era Krays.
I said, ‘Thanks for seeing me.’
Rab said, ‘Our pleasure. Dan Starkey.’
He indicated a plastic chair. I sat. I put my hands on my legs and nodded from one to the other. The only thing between them was an Apple PowerBook and a diet.
‘Which one of you is Rab?’ I asked.
It was an old tactic I’d used to deflate celebs in the past.
Rab ignored the question and instead asked: ‘Have you ever been to China, Dan?’
‘Not yet,’ I said.
‘In China,’ he continued, ‘in business meetings it’s the tradition to exchange gifts.’
‘I don’t come bearing gifts,’ I said, ‘except of knowledge. And I’ve the feeling you’re talking about Japan.’
‘Well, we have a gift. Brother?’ He nodded at Windy, and Windy opened a drawer and took out a plastic bag. ‘Do you know someone called Patrick Barr? Paddy, I think.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well,’ said Windy, holding out the bag. ‘These are his teeth.’
They did, indeed, appear to be teeth, together with a fair smattering of gum and blood and gunk.
As I looked at them, a low, pitiful groan came from the room behind them.
‘No,’ said Windy.
‘He’s in the Lagan. We have someone else in there. He used to run one of our companies, until he robbed us blind. Perhaps you’ve met him?’
I wasn’t unduly surprised by how swiftly they had discovered that they had been betrayed, or by their response. They’d had a lot of years to hone their craft. The bag was tied neatly at the top. Windy swung it round once so that it landed in the palm of his hand. He squeezed it.
‘You’ve some big fucking balls on you, Starkey,’ said Rab.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Walking in here, facing us down, thinking that cunt down there can protect you.’
‘You know,’ said Windy, ‘that right now he’s face down on a snooker table with a cue up his arse.’
‘That would appear to contravene the rules,’ I said.
Windy shook his head. ‘Have you even thought this through?’ he asked. ‘What’s to stop us pulling all of your teeth out until you tell us where our gear is?’
‘I thought I’d appeal to your sense of fair play and justice.’
‘I was told you were a funny fucker,’ snapped Rab.
‘It’s a widely held belief,’ I said.
I think they were a little unsettled by my stupid grin. I have perfected the look over many years. It often makes people want to slap my face. It is not a grin that has anything to do with humour, or smugness; it is a default mechanism to hide the panic and the terror; the same mechanism often causes me to say stupid things. But sometimes, sometimes, it gives people pause for thought. They occasionally make the mistake of thinking that I am smarter than I look, or know something that they do not.
I picked at a fleck of dust on my trousers that an atomic scientist would have struggled to detect.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s be open about this. The reason I’m here is your threat to kill Bobby Murray, and your wish to interfere with his right to live a happy and peacefully hoody life here on the Shankill. I understand he owes you money, and some drugs. But really, you give a fourteen-year-old access, what do you expect. And besides—’
‘Besides nothing, you fucking halfwit,’ Rab snapped. ‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’
‘Let him finish,’ said Windy.
‘Thank you, Windy,’ I said.
‘Don’t call me Windy,’ said Windy.
‘And besides,’ I continued, ‘you killed his mother. That should be punishment enough.’
They just looked at me.
‘What’s your point, Starkey?’ Rab asked.
‘I have your money and I have your drugs; I’m told it’s about two million worth. And yes, I’m sure you could make me tell you where it is. To tell you the truth, I usually scream the place down when I get a filling, but that’s not really what this is about, is it?’
‘Really?’ said Windy.
‘Really,’ I said. ‘Look, Windy, most of the time the folks on the hill don’t give a fuck what you do up here, as long as you keep it local. They even turn a blind eye when you have your wee wars amongst yourselves. But when I publish the list of people you’ve been supplying with coke through Malone, the times, the places, the amounts, they will not tolerate that. That’s attacking them in their own back patio. They won’t be able to stop it getting out any more than you will, but it will give them the mandate to stop you, both of you, once and for all. Maybe you can blackmail the likes of Abagail Pike, but you can’t blackmail them all. The moment I go viral with this, you won’t last twenty-four hours; it’ll make Wikileaks look like a bit of fucking street-corner gossip.’
Rab glanced at Windy. Windy kept his eyes on me.
‘You’ve got it all figured out,’ he said.
‘Enough of it,’ I said. ‘Forgetting for the moment your admirable quest to protect us from the Republican hordes, I think at heart you’re both just businessmen, and you can see the benefits of making a deal.’
‘What kind of a deal?’ Rab asked.
‘You let Bobby Murray back on the Shankill, you lift all threats against him, his family and friends, and I hold off on releasing the info.’
‘So we replace our threats with your threats?’ Rab asked.
‘Yes, if you like.’
‘What about our cash, our gear?’ asked Windy.
‘Say I give it back to you in stages, once a month, as long as Bobby is okay.’
‘Over what time period?’
‘Say, six months.’
‘And what happens at the end of six months, we have all our gear back? You delete the evidence?’
‘How would we ever be sure of that?’
‘Your continued freedom would be the proof.’
‘That would only be proof that you hadn’t released it. So you would be expecting us to conduct our business under a constant threat?’
‘You expect others to.’
Windy got up from the desk and came around to the front, and sat with half his arse on the corner opposite his brother. He folded his arms and said, ‘We are the de facto leaders of the Ulster Volunteer Force. If we are beholden to you, that would make you the de facto leader of the Ulster Volunteer Force. That is impossible.’
‘It’s my final offer.’
‘Your final offer!’ Rab exploded, and launched himself off the desk, grabbing my jacket and then thrusting his fists into my chest, knocking the chair back on two legs. It teetered for a moment and then fell back. My head cracked off the wooden floor. As the stars sparkled, Rab stood over me and jabbed a finger down. ‘Who the fuck do you think . . .?’
He aimed a kick. The only reason it didn’t land was because Windy pulled him back and it sailed inches wide. Rab struggled for a moment, but then relaxed as his brother whispered urgently in his ear.
I lay where I was until Windy stepped forward, reached down and grabbed my jacket. He pulled me up. The seat of my trousers stuck with sweat to the chair for a moment, before it fell back. He stood me up straight, released my jacket, and then patted the front of it, like he was a primary school teacher reassuring a fallen child.
‘You’ll have to forgive my brother,’ he said. ‘He’s not used to being threatened.’
‘You’re forgiven,’ I said.
This did not improve Rab’s demeanour.
‘We’ve heard your offer,’ said Windy, ‘and under the circumstances, it’s not unreasonable. In the grand scheme of things, killing Bobby Murray is no longer that important to us.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘But my brother and I will need to talk it through.’
‘That’s not unreasonable.’
‘It is good for us that people believe we are ruthless, and vicious, and vengeful. And we can be. That is what we sell. But we aren’t like that all the time. We are able to come to perfectly workable business agreements without recourse to threats or violence. Leave it with us, we’ll let you know within twenty-four hours.’
I nodded. But I didn’t move.
‘What?’ asked Rab. ‘We’re done here.’
‘I was thinking of a goodwill gesture on your part.’
‘Our part . . .? Jesus!’
I nodded at the door in the wall behind them. ‘Give me him. He didn’t do anything wrong; he thought I was going to shoot him.’
‘You?’ Windy laughed. ‘He gave it all away for nothing. And he’s the reason you’re here, dictating terms.’
‘Nevertheless.’
He weighed it up for a few moments, then without reference to his brother, who was still glaring at me, crossed to the door and opened it halfway. He spoke to someone inside. I couldn’t hear what he said. Then he pulled the door open a bit wider and stood back to allow the shuffling, stooped and mash-faced horror that was Derek Beattie to stagger through. His white shirt was bright red in places, darker in others. His torture had clearly been lengthy and systematic. The former owner of Malone Security stopped, swayed, and sank to his knees. He let out a long, shivering groan and his head dropped to his chest, and huge sobs began to shake his entire body.
I moved beside him. I crouched down. ‘It’s okay Derek, it’s all right.’
A slight movement behind him drew my eyes to the open door. At the far end of a spartan room with but one plastic chair, there was a man methodically washing blood from his hands in a sink. As I watched, he turned to lift a small towel off a handrail beside him, and I saw who it was, and knew immediately that far from the situation being resolved through a canny mix of brinksmanship and diplomacy, things were more than likely to go from bad to worse.
Drying his hands: Detective Inspector Springer.