He stood to attention in front of the desk I was using.
‘Anything up, Joe?’
He glanced around the room to see if anyone else was listening, then coughed quietly before he spoke. ‘It was a bit rough this morning.’
I nodded. ‘It was that.’
‘Did we – could we have . . . you know?’
‘Could we have prevented it?’
He nodded.
I considered my response. ‘I don’t think so. Kielty chose to pull a gun. He chose to hole up with his child. We did our best.’
I knew he was no more assured on the point than I was myself.
‘I was wondering if I could take off for a while, sir. I didn’t sleep much last night. I’d kinda like to have a shower and that.’
‘Go home, Joe. Thanks for your work on this. Take a break for the day. This morning was taxing on all of us.’
He smiled expansively. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, wasting no time in leaving. Most new recruits spent time on traffic duties, so I had no doubt that McCready had seen a death before. Whether he had witnessed one so violent was a different matter.
The desk sergeant made me a pot of coffee while I read through Cunningham’s file. A lot of it was straightforward, and simply fleshed out from information I already knew about him.
He had been a leading paramilitary for years, serving time for murder. During the Troubles he had been suspected of planning a number of attacks, including a roadside bomb which missed its intended victim and instead exploded under a minibus full of young fellas on their way to a stag weekend. Cunningham was also suspected to be the shooter in three other killings, though he had never been caught. When they eventually lifted him, it was on the word of one of the supergrasses of the eighties whom Special Branch recruited and paid for information.
Cunningham had made the most of his time inside to develop his academic record. He had studied politics and philosophy to degree level, graduating with first-class honours. During incarceration he had written to various humanitarian organizations, arguing that the manner of his conviction violated his civil rights.
He finally had been released under licence following the Good Friday Agreement, only to have his licence revoked just the previous year after he was accused of the attempted murder of the head of a rival political splinter group. Witnesses claimed that Cunningham had taken a machete to the man in the toilets of the Blackthorn Inn in Burndrum. Despite extensive injuries, the victim refused to name his attacker and would not press charges against Cunningham. The DPP in the North, though, clearly felt that Cunningham had a case to answer and he served eight months. During this time he submitted to regular drug testing, always being shown to be clean, which had helped him secure his release. However, perhaps due to him attacking a fellow ex-paramilitary in the Blackthorn, during this last stint in prison he had been refused permission to stay on the political wing by the other inmates and had been held in the general population. This in itself suggested that he was working on his own now, and that Cunningham’s old comrades would not necessarily support The Rising – with the exception of Armstrong and Irvine, obviously.
I had almost finished skimming over the details of his incarceration, when I recognized a name I knew. During his eight months inside, Charlie Cunningham had shared a cell with a convict doing time for fuel laundering: Vincent Morrison.
It took me almost an hour to get back to Lifford. On the way there, I called through to Burgess and had him find out Vincent Morrison’s new address for me.
The address he gave was a few miles down the road to Derry, outside Porthall. I knew the area, though I didn’t recognize the house name. When I got there I realized why. The house was brand new, built within the past year or two at most. It squatted impressively in the middle of an estate comprising at least ten acres. The driveway to the house ran a quarter-mile up from the main road, alongside a field full of young colts, their breath steaming in the weak afternoon sunlight.
The house itself was a two-storey red-brick building, the heavy front doors sheltered beneath a porch held up by twin Doric columns. A pair of muddy wellington boots lay discarded beside the welcome mat. To my left, sitting in front of the double garage, sat the Range Rover in which I had seen Morrison that night near the cinema, and a second car, a new registration Citroën Picasso.
I rang the doorbell and stepped back, glancing around the estate. I heard the clunk of the lock and the door swung open. Vincent Morrison stood in the doorway, his trouser legs tucked into his socks.
‘Inspector Devlin,’ he said, his hand extended. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’ He glanced around the front of the house to see if I was alone. ‘What brings you here?’
‘I wanted to speak with you.’
He laughed lightly. ‘Do I need my lawyer?’
‘That depends on what you have to say.’ He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise, then called behind him into the house. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
Over his shoulder, I could see his wife standing on a wooden chair in the hallway, taping a Happy Birthday banner to the wall. Various coloured balloons hung from the banister of the stairway.
Morrison followed my gaze. ‘The young fella’s birthday tomorrow,’ he explained. ‘A Valentine’s Day baby,’ he added as he closed the door and lifted the muddy boots to pull them back on his feet. ‘C’mon. I’ll show you around.’
We walked past the double garage I had seen and around the back of the house. ‘You’ll like the stables,’ he said. ‘The kids love it.’
‘This is a fine place you’ve got,’ I said. ‘I’m amazed you could afford it. I thought you’d been declared bankrupt.’
Morrison smiled a pretence of embarrassment. ‘A few wise investments before I got put away,’ he said. ‘Besides, I don’t own this – it’s the wife’s. A gift from her father.’
‘Rich father,’ I said.
‘And generous,’ he added, laughing again.
‘Does the Criminal Assets Bureau know about this?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do you really think they’d care? My father-in-law looked after my wife while I was serving my time – nothing criminal in that.’
We rounded the corner to where a block of four stables backed onto the field I had seen as I drove up the main driveway. Three of the cubicles were empty; in the fourth a tall brown horse stood, its head hanging over the gate while Morrison’s son brushed the white strip of its nose.
‘You’ve met my son before, I believe. Haven’t you?’
I had – the day in court when Morrison had been sent down. I had no doubt, from the flash of resentment in the child’s face, that he remembered the occasion too.
‘I’ll finish up here, son,’ he said to the boy, taking the brush from him. When he had gone, Morrison patted the horse on the nose, then led me outside. ‘So, what can I do you for? I’m guessing this isn’t a neighbourly visit,’ he said.
‘You know Charlie Cunningham,’ I stated.
‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘I do. We were cellmates for a spell. So what?’
‘It’s handy that you’ve managed to convince your community group to support his Rising thing.’
‘Nothing handy about it. I have children; I don’t want them being exposed to that kind of stuff.’
‘That’s a bit hypocritical, isn’t it?’
‘Why?’ he asked, perplexed. ‘Because I did time? Move on, Devlin; I have.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said.
‘That’s irrelevant,’ Morrison said, smiling as he leant on the fence bordering the field, watching the horses cantering around its edges. ‘The remission board believed me. To be honest, I don’t give a shit what you think.’
‘I’m told Cunningham’s group are a front; instead of trying to drive dealers out, they’re trying to force them to sell their produce.’
‘You have evidence for all this, of course.’
‘The thing is, our intelligence tells us that Cunningham’s group wouldn’t have the cash to start something like this. They would need someone with money. Someone rich.’ I glanced around the expanse of his grounds. ‘Someone generous, even.’
He laughed, though without humour. ‘This is fascinating. If it’s true, you can be sure that we’ll not be supporting The Rising any more, Inspector. You’re visiting all the local residents’ groups and informing them of this personally, I take it.’
He extended his hand to shake, signalling that, to his mind at least, our conversation was over.
As I drove away from his house, watching the building recede in my rear-view mirror, I reflected on what Morrison had said to me the day I had seen him in court. He had boasted that he would be back on top in no time once he was released. He may well have been gifted his house from his father-in-law, but I suspected that he had more money at his disposal than he was admitting. Hendry had claimed that The Rising were linking themselves to Morrison’s community group opportunistically. I suspected, now, that the relationship was symbiotic. With his money invested in their produce, and with Irvine and his cronies forcing the dealers in the area to sell the drugs for him, Morrison was himself rising back to power.
I contacted the desk sergeant in Sligo who told me that Kielty would not be available for questioning until the following morning. He had come through surgery on his shoulder, though was not yet well enough to speak to us. The sergeant had also received the findings from ballistics, which concluded that Elena McEvoy had been killed by a bullet from Kielty’s own gun. There was, therefore, no need for me to go back down to Sligo until the following day.
I sat on the sofa with Debbie and the kids watching a movie that night. The schools were closed for mid-term the following day and we had promised them they could sit up later than usual.
‘How was school?’ I asked Shane who lay curled up beside me, his arm wrapped around my leg, my thigh muscle pillowing his head.
‘Fine. I got my drawing on the best-work board.’
‘What was the drawing?’
I could see the movement of his eyebrows as he rolled his eyes. ‘A dinosaur. We had to draw something starting with the letter B.’
I frowned towards Debbie who shrugged. Penny sniggered into her mother’s shoulder.
‘Dinosaur doesn’t start with a B, little man.’
‘I drew a brachiosaurus,’ he said with a sigh, reaching his hand around to the bowl of popcorn Penny balanced on her lap.
‘What about you, Penny?’ I asked, taking a handful of popcorn myself. ‘How’s school?’
‘Fine,’ she said.
‘Penny has another disco tomorrow. For Valentine’s Day. She can go, right?’ Debbie said, the question phrased in such a manner as to brook no discussion.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Long as your teacher’s going to be there.’
Penny flashed a brief smile at me and nodded her head.
‘I saw John Morrison today,’ I said.
She stared at me horrified. ‘You didn’t say anything to him, did you?’
‘Like what?’
‘Anything.’
‘I might have said “Hello”.’ I laughed. ‘I was out with his father.’
‘He says you hate his father.’
‘I don’t hate him,’ I said.
‘Then why do you keep harassing him? You don’t like him.’
‘It’s not about liking him. I don’t trust him,’ I explained gently.
‘You don’t trust anyone!’ my daughter retorted with a viciousness I wouldn’t have considered her capable of.
‘That’s enough,’ Debbie snapped at her. ‘Don’t speak to your father like that.’
Penny looked at me from under the fringe of her hair. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, sullenly lifting a piece of popcorn to her mouth.
‘Forget about it,’ I said, though I found it impossible to follow my own advice.
After the kids went to bed, Debbie and I spoke about the exchange.
‘What were you thinking, bringing up Morrison, Ben? I swear, sometimes you can be so obtuse.’
‘It’s the boy’s birthday tomorrow. When I was at the house they were getting ready for a party. I hope that’s not where Penny is going for Valentine’s Day.’
‘She says the school has organized a disco. I’m taking her at her word.’
‘What if she’s lying?’ I asked.
‘After what she said tonight, you have no choice but to trust her, Ben. Otherwise, you’ll just have proved her right.’
‘I trust her. I don’t trust Morrison.’
‘Why were you out with him?’
‘He served time with the leader of this crowd, The Rising. I’m fairly certain they’re behind the killings of the two drug dealers.’
‘Two dead drug dealers? Now that’s worth investigating,’ she said.
‘They’re killing them so they can flood the place with their own drugs. Except apparently they haven’t got any money. Someone else is bankrolling them, and I’m fairly certain it’s Morrison.’
‘Penny’s right,’ Debbie said, changing the channel on the TV. ‘You do hate him.’
Kielty was brought from Sligo General under armed guard and, a little after 11 a.m., was led in cuffs into the interview room, where Joe McCready and I were waiting. His face was gaunt and yellowed, his eyes bloodless, his chin sandpapered with stubble so light in colour, it appeared grey.