Disappeared (11 page)

The boy’s body arched away from Daly as he backed out of the room. Perhaps his odd behavior was due to the invisible shadow cast by the father labeled an informer, thought Daly, the sense of shame the boy had carried into the world from the moment of his birth, as contaminating as original sin.

Daly was beginning to suspect that Devine had been murdered because of his investigations into the past. Somehow his death was linked to the abduction of Oliver Jordan and a possible cover-up by Special Branch. Daly wondered to himself why the police had botched the original investigation if the victim was a suspected mole. Surely if Jordan had been an informer, the police would have been keen to find out how their man was discovered and who had killed him. He began to think that Tessa Jordan might be right, that whatever her husband had been guilty of, it was not spying for the security forces. He felt wary, interested. He was following the tracks left by Joseph Devine, but the two of them were circling above a deeper mystery, one shrouded in a darkness to which his eyes had still to adjust.

He had no more questions to ask Tessa Jordan. Before he left, he promised to keep her up to date with any developments in the case.

“What about the burnt-out bin?” she asked.

“I’ll send an arson team ’round to examine it, see if any clues were left behind. I’ll also put a patrol car on the street to keep watch. It might deter any further attacks.”

This time at the door, Tessa Jordan shook hands with him. Daly glanced up the staircase, but the shadowy children had gone. The street was still quiet when he got into his car. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the teenage boy standing on the doorstep with his mother. Together, they looked like two survivors just crawled out from the crater of a bomb.

C
hief Inspector Ivan Donaldson pointed to the reinforced security gates at Derrylee Police and chewed vigorously at his thick mustache. A black panic still hung around the watchtower and gates, even though it had been a decade since a mortar bomb last rattled the cups and saucers in the police canteen.

“Those gates survived countless bomb attacks, but now they’re to fall before the gaze of architects and planners,” he complained. “Do you know the local rag has branded this station the ugliest building in Northern Ireland?”

Daly noticed that Donaldson’s mustache chewing was a little noisier than usual and that the chief appeared perturbed.

“Looks like we’re under attack from the forces of good taste, sir,” said Daly, staring at the scorch marks and dents that covered the metal gates. For years they had acted as a magnet for grenades, rockets, and all sorts of homemade incendiary devices. Now as part of the demilitarization process, they were to be pulled down and sent to the scrap heap.

Earlier, Daly had walked into his office to find the chief poring over his notes into Devine’s murder. The detective had felt an instinctive uneasiness, a reflex he could no more control than that resulting from a struck knee.

At Donaldson’s suggestion, they made their way across the car park toward his large gold Audi.

The chief inspector clicked his keys and checked beneath the car. Inside, he started the engine and switched on the heater.

“Sometimes I wonder if we’re any safer than we were during the Troubles,” he remarked.

Daly stared at the windscreen and waited for Donaldson to continue. The leather seat was comfortable, and he began to turn over images in his mind from his interview with Tessa Jordan. The car was a good place for a briefing. It allowed them both the opportunity to avoid eye contact. The engine ticked idly, and for a moment Daly thought the chief’s voice might prove to be a pleasing soundtrack as he drifted toward the gates of sleep. Then the tone of Donaldson’s voice changed abruptly.

“There’s one thing I want to make clear, Inspector,” he said. “Special Branch isn’t involved in the investigation into Devine’s murder. But they have been advising me on the bigger picture. It’s important you should be discreet.”

“About what?”

“Talking to anyone about what the case throws up. Full stop.” His voice had stiffened.

Daly shifted his body toward the passenger door.

“Especially about any link to the abduction of Oliver Jordan,” the chief continued. “In their opinion, that avenue would complicate things.”

Donaldson turned to look at Daly. His face was blank, but his concentration was like that of a gambler at a roulette table, waiting for the spinning ball to find its slot.

A long silence filled the car.

“I think Devine’s death complicated things in the first place, sir,” replied Daly.

Donaldson was undeterred. He returned to gazing out the windscreen. “For your information, Special Branch has told me they think it unlikely Republican paramilitaries were involved in Devine’s murder. Too frenzied an attack, and the body was left at the scene of the murder. Typically, the IRA did their killing across the border and dumped the body in the North. Separates the forensics and complicates the investigation.”

“That’s very helpful of Special Branch. But I hear they haven’t been as forthcoming with theories about Jordan’s abduction.” Daly’s voice did not have to adopt a belligerent edge; the air was already awash with it. “What’s the official line they gave his widow, Tessa? That he disappeared off the face of the earth on his way to work one morning?”

He watched Donaldson carefully for his reaction. His use of Mrs. Jordan’s first name would have indicated he had already met the woman.

The chief had been well briefed. “As I understand it, a series of detectives from the branch were assigned to investigate the abduction, but, for one reason or another, they all left. One retired, another moved to a different division, one detective died, and the final one was seriously injured in a bomb explosion. By itself that’s not unusual. There has always been lots of turnover in Special Branch. However, somewhere along the transfers some important files went missing. The Jordan family maintained it was a cover-up, and the press have run with that angle. If they get a whiff of his case being investigated again, they’ll be all over us.”

“I’ve a question for Special Branch. Don’t you think the Jordan family deserve more justice than they’ve been given?”

Donaldson was overcome by a fit of coughing, the legacy of a career spent smoking two packs of Benson & Hedges a day. When the fit had settled, he placed his hand across his chest. A look of condescension strutted across his features.

“Inspector Daly, you’re new to this police force, but I’m sure you’re a competent detective and well intentioned. I’ve been a police officer for more than forty years and I find it hard to renounce the things I have always believed in. One of the things I am certain about is that we won the war, and not the IRA. It was a violent time. I’m not denying that. You must understand that it was Special Branch’s ring of informers and spies that made the IRA realize the pointlessness of the armed struggle. Oliver Jordan was unlike the countless innocents on both sides who lost their lives. He was an IRA man. Never forget that.”

“Is that meant to absolve Special Branch from any responsibility in bringing his killers to justice? What if Jordan’s killers also murdered Devine because he was about to expose them? If they turn up on my doorstep, am I meant to shelter them too and help them evade justice?”

“They didn’t do it,” said Donaldson coldly. “All the suspects involved in Jordan’s murder are dead. If they did turn up on your doorstep, Inspector Daly, I’d be very worried indeed.”

He started the car and indicated to Daly that it was time to leave. “My loyalty is to the peaceful society we created, Inspector. What we achieved wasn’t easy. There were many dark days when officers had to go out on the streets in the afternoon after burying a murdered colleague that morning. Sometimes the rules got lost in translation. It’s a regret, of course….” He trailed off. The tone of his voice, however, suggested something less than bottomless regret.

“Stay in touch, Daly, and I’ll let you know if anything crops up from Special Branch. And remember, you’re in a very fortunate position. You only need worry about loyalty to your commanding officers.”

Let me know what? wondered Daly. He doubted if Special Branch was going to help shine any light on the investigation. And what did he mean by loyalty to his commanding officers? Of course, as a policeman he had to obey commands. But wasn’t there a higher authority, another moral code to be obeyed? If a plot to protect a Special Branch spy lay at the heart of the investigation, he would expose it and make sure the scumbags involved in the cover-up would be brought to justice.

His meeting with Donaldson had been uncomfortable, perplexing even, but oddly, he found himself looking forward to a future encounter with Special Branch. He wondered whether that revealed a capacity for masochism he never realized he had, a desire to pit himself against disproportionate forces when any reasonable person might just walk away.

Perhaps Tessa Jordan had been right in a sense, and Irish Catholics were hardwired to react with rage to injustice, even when it might bring about their own downfall.

F
ive days had passed since Devine’s murder, and the brutal news had been splashed across the front pages of the national and local newspapers. The police meeting scheduled at nine a.m. was their first as a team during the investigation. Daly licked his lips and was surprised at their dryness. He could feel sweat forming on his forehead and wondered if he was coming down with something. He began to speak, hoping that the calm of experience would carry through in his voice, but for some reason it did not. He checked the faces of the other officers to see if they noted the anxiety in his hesitant opening. Irwin looked groggy, while Harland tried to stifle a yawn. O’Neill was busy tapping a pen against her teeth. Daly guessed that for some of his officers the meeting was like dozing in front of a TV screen. It didn’t matter if the sound was faulty, just as long as there was a picture to look at.

“Let’s look at the search for David Hughes first,” he said before a tickle in his throat developed into a coughing fit.

The fact that he had led murder investigations countless times before provided no assurance he could do it again. He knew he would have to face the depths of himself once again, and he worried that he had changed. Working long hours on tough cases in Glasgow had forced him to develop a hard-boiled emotional privacy when on the job that was like a bunker in no-man’s-land. Its defenses had been considerably weakened by his separation from Anna, and the last few months spent investigating vandalism and car crime in the rural backwaters of County Armagh.

“I think our missing man is going to stay missing,” announced Irwin.

He and Harland had traced the remaining members of the duck-hunting club, but there was no evidence any of them might be sheltering Hughes. They had also checked with hotels, bed and breakfasts, even nursing homes in the area.

Daly suggested they issue another press release to enlist the public’s help in the search.

“Is there not a good possibility the poor bugger is dead?” asked Constable Harland.

“Somehow, I doubt it,” replied Daly. “I believe he’s staying with a friend of sorts. At least we can be fairly sure he hasn’t been kidnapped. Or being held against his will.”

“If no offense has been committed and he left of his own free will, why are we getting involved? Is it our business if a man wants to take himself off and get his head showered for a while?”

“The circumstances of his disappearance are still suspicious enough to warrant our interest,” said Daly. “Never mind the fact that a confused old man is at large, probably armed with an untrustworthy hunting gun.”

They moved on to the murder enquiry.

“We’re going to have to dig deeper into Devine’s life,” said Daly.

The team decided to move on two fronts. Daly would make a start on reinvestigating the circumstances of Oliver Jordan’s abduction while Irwin and Harland would examine the cases Devine had worked on while employed by O’Hare solicitors.

Before the meeting broke up, Daly handed Irwin the remnants of the newspaper clippings he had found in the hedge at Hughes’s cottage.

“You should show these to Devine’s former colleagues. I believe they might have a connection with his past, and possibly his murder, too.”

When he returned home, the scolding cluck of a flock of hens greeted him. They were a brood of leghorns, which his father had kept for company and the odd egg. He had forgotten to feed them that morning­, and they sounded angry. They fluttered into the air as he walked up to the front door, their feathers wild and wet from the hedgerows. Black clouds had gathered in the sky and large drops of rain fell on his head. He paid no heed to the birds and plunged into the damp darkness of the cottage.

The wheel of detective work had begun to bear him away from the confines of his father’s cottage, and he wondered if it was time to clear out the house, put the place up for sale, and free himself of its burden. The impatient cries of the fowl echoed with the voices inside him, equally plaintive and imperative—Oliver Jordan and Joseph Devine seeking deliverance from beyond their graves, and David Hughes, confused and frightened, gathered up in a net of secret memories.

He made himself something to eat. Then he lit a turf fire, and sat down, idly flicking through a manual on chicken rearing he lifted from a pile of old farming journals.

He woke with a start a few hours later. He found himself sitting slumped over the gray grate like a man waiting for his lover to turn up for dinner. The fire had gone out, and he could feel the thin threads of cold creeping through chinks in the window frames. The clock on the mantelpiece showed almost midnight. He knew from experience this was not the place or time to get drunk, and he resisted the temptation to switch on the radio to catch the late news bulletin. Newsreaders were too obsessed with crime, doling out the accounts of random violence to their audience like bedside stories. He craved a cigarette and wondered if he would sleep tonight.