In the Morning I'll Be Gone (10 page)

“What is this? Is this a smuggler’s trail or something?” Kate asked, a little bit excited by the prospect.

“Nah, smugglers use better roads than this,” I said.

“What are we going to do if we run into an army checkpoint? I didn’t bring my proper ID and you’ve got a gun. How are we going to explain ourselves?”

“We’ll be fine,” I assured her.

The lane ended abruptly near Derryvane and we were nearly all the way to Muff before Kate realized that we had already crossed the border and were now in the Irish Republic.

Jonty McCann lived just beyond Muff on the R238 in a newly renovated granite Victorian manse overlooking Lough Foyle. Sheep and cows were all around and the smell of fertilizer was in the air.

I parked outside the white, cast-iron gate and got out. I ditched the leather jacket and got my raincoat from the boot.

“You wanna come in for this one? It’ll be the same story.”

“I’ll come in,” Kate said, still a little nonplussed by the ease of our border crossing. If
I
knew of a secret unpatrolled road from Northern Ireland to the Irish Republic the terrorists must know hundreds . . .

Jonty’s garden was planted with sweet pea and red and pink roses.

The house looked neat and well maintained.

It said on the bio that Jonty was a builder, but he was also a retired INLA divisional quartermaster who had organized operations that had killed scores of people over the years: police, army, civilians, and the leaders of rival factions, including a couple of top IRA men. In theory there was a truce between the IRA and INLA, but Jonty had to know that someday someone might come looking for revenge.

We knocked on his blue front door.

It was opened by a young woman with brown hair and green eyes who was wearing a Snoopy sweatshirt and green Wellington Boots. I knew I should have been scoping her but it was the sweatshirt I was obsessing about. Snoopy was wearing the shades of his Joe Cool persona that had been fashionable briefly about ten years ago. How had the sweatshirt survived through so many spin cycles?

“Looking for Jonty McCann,” I said after Kate nudged me.

“Yes,” Kate said.

The young woman looked at Kate and was somewhat reassured. She certainly didn’t look like an IRA assassin.

“What for?” the young woman asked.

“Private business,” I said.

“What sort of private business?”

“It’s private, that’s all I can say.”

“He doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s fishing.”

“I don’t think this will take too long.”

She examined my face, trying to figure out what I was, exactly. I showed her my warrant card.

“I’m an RUC detective and I have no authority here in Donegal whatsoever. If Jonty doesn’t want to speak to me he can tell me piss off and there’s not a thing I can do about it. But I don’t think he will. This will only take five minutes.”

She nodded. “He would never talk to a policeman.”

“I suppose I could ask him and see?”

“I suppose you could ask. All right . . . He’s fishing down the lane.”

“Where’s that?”

“Go round the side of the house and head down toward the water. I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

“Aye, do that.”

I smiled at her and she closed the front door.

She was probably going to call him on a walkie-talkie, or more likely he’d already heard this entire conversation on an open mike. Sending us down here on foot would give him ample time to get his gun out and prep for us.

Sure enough, at the bottom of the brambly lane Jonty was standing there in front of a fishing stool and two rods. He was facing us with his right hand in the pocket of his Barbour jacket.

He looked younger than his fifty years. Thick black hair and bushy beard, no worry lines at all. Clearly he wasn’t being tormented by bad dreams of men who had begged him for their lives. We’d met once before when Dermot had been captain of the school team in the Irish Inter Schools Debating Cup. Of course, we had won the tournament and Dermot had been rightly feted by the school. I’d been on that team too but Dermot was always the star of the hour and I imagine Jonty wouldn’t have remembered me at the victory party at the Londonderry Arms in Carnlough.

I put my hands up and motioned to Kate so that she did the same.

“What do you want, peeler?” Jonty asked with his hand still in his pocket.

“I’m looking for your nephew, Jonty. I’m looking for Dermot,” I said.

“Dermot? Why would I have any idea where he is?” Jonty said.

“And even if you did you wouldn’t tell me.”

“No.”

We stared at one another. My hands up, his right still on the trigger of his gun.

“Has he contacted you at all since he escaped?” I asked.

“I’m not going to tell you anything. You’re just wasting your time here, cop,” Jonty said.

“Did he contact you from Libya at all?” I asked.

“Libya? Where’s that?”

Jonty was a veteran of dozens of interrogations in his time: the RUC, the Irish cops, the British Army, British Intelligence . . .

He could go on like this for hours.

I looked at Kate. This was mostly for her benefit, so that she could report back and tell them that I had at least tried. But I was also curious about Orla.

“If he does get in touch, tell him that Sean Duffy was asking for him,” I said.

Jonty’s eyes narrowed.

“I know you. Working for the Brits because we wouldn’t have you. You’ll take anyone’s shilling, will you? Or is thirty pieces of silver more the asking price?”

I yawned. You’d think they would have come up with more original lines after all this time.

“Do you know a pimp called Poppy Devlin?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Maureen tells me that your niece, Orla, has taken up with this character.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Orla will listen to no one. She goes her own way and what she does is her own business.”

“I remember Orla. Beautiful wee girl and smart with it. Could you not do something about it, Jonty? Everyone’s very upset.”

“Don’t you speak about it! Don’t you speak about anyone in my family! It’s not your concern, copper! We’ve done all we can for Orla! All we can do and more! And I can’t go back to Derry now. It’s impossible! Do you understand? All I can do is use my influence from here.”

“But Jonty, if—”

He pulled out the 9mm and pointed it at us.

“Enough! You’ve made me raise my voice, peeler. You’ve made me scare the fish. I think it’s time you went back over the border to the Six Counties, don’t you?” His voice was shaking with cold menace.

“OK, take it easy, mate. We’ll go,” I said.

I backed up a few paces.

“Go on, then!” he snarled.

Kate and I turned and walked quickly back to the car.

When we got in the Beemer Kate lit one of my fags with a trembling hand.

“Are you OK?” I asked her.

“I thought for a moment he was going to shoot us. No one knew we were there. He could have done it and got away with it easily,” she said.

“He could have. But it would have ruined his fishing.”

I got the car going and in ten minutes we were back over the border into Northern Ireland.

“I suppose I’ll take you home, then,” I said.

“I suppose you should,” she agreed.

I drove through Derry and then along the coast.

Kate had no conversation so I put on Radio 3.

She seemed to be digesting the day’s events.

Radio 3 was playing
Einstein on the Beach
by Philip Glass, a piece I had actually seen in New York in the presence of the composer.

I tried to tell Kate about it but she wasn’t interested in the least.

When we got to Coleraine, she told me to pull over. “You’ll want to go home along the A26 and the M2. There’s no point driving out of your way to go to Ballycastle. I’ll get the bus. They’re every twenty minutes.”

“Are you sure? It’s really no trouble.”

“No. Leave me at the bus station and then you go on home, Sean. It’s been a long day.”

“All right, then,” I said.

I drove to the bus station. It was four o’clock now.

“Will you make the last ferry to Rathlin OK?”

“Oh yes. And if I ever miss it there’s a man in a little boat who’ll take you over for a couple of pounds.”

I nodded. “Not the most productive day ever, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“But that’s police work. I expect it’s the same in your profession.”

“Why did you keep bringing up Dermot’s sister, Orla?” she asked astutely.

“Well, clearly there’s been some sort of factional fighting in the city. The McCanns have been more or less driven out. Jonty’s living in exile over the border, the rest of the family has emigrated, the mother and Fiona are in some shithole flat, and no one apparently can do anything to help Orla . . .”

“What does all that mean?”

“Dermot used to be a big man in Derry, but the years in prison have allowed other people to rise up in the vacuum. Dermot’s never been fond of the limelight. He likes to move the pieces from behind the scenes, but that’s not the way to intimidate anyone, certainly not people on the ground. He’ll need to prove himself if he wants to become a major player again.”

“How?”

“You know how. Maybe he can turn the family fortunes around with some kind of IRA spectacular. It’ll have to be something big, something very big . . .”

“Like?”

“I don’t know.”

She opened the car door and the rain came pouring in.

“Do you think any of them will help us find out where Dermot is?”

“Not a chance, not in a million years . . . Of course, they might slip up.”

She bit her lip and nodded. “The wire taps, you mean?”

“Aye, the wire taps.”

“There’s always that. And the ex-wife, you’re going to interview her too?”

“Annie. Yeah.”

“One might have more hope with an ex-wife than a mother or a sister?” she asked optimistically.

“Annie will be a tough nut to crack.”

“Did you know her too, back in the day?”

“Oh yes.”

She gazed at me for a couple of seconds and looked at her watch.

“I must say I’m feeling a little let down,” she said.

“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope you haven’t oversold me to your bosses.”

She dodged the question. “You know none of them seem that well off . . . Perhaps if we offered them money?”

I laughed. “This isn’t Bongo Bongo land.”

“You’d be surprised, Sean.”

“I’m sure I would be, but not with them. Believe me, you can’t buy people like the McCanns.”

She looked at her watch again. “Well, I have a ferry to catch and a report to write.”

She gave me a half-wave, got out of the car, and ran for the bus.

When she was safely on board the Ballycastle express, I headed for the roundabout and drove back along the A37 and then the A2 again back into Derry.

I was cutting against the rush-hour traffic and it was no problem getting over the bridge on to the Bogside.

I found the off-license on Carlisle Street and parked the Beemer outside. The rain was much heavier now and the two men from earlier had gone.

I unbuttoned my raincoat so that I could get easy access to my shoulder holster. I took a breath, got out of the Beemer, locked it, and went inside the offy.

Crates of Harp and Bass were stacked along one wall, there were a few bottles of cheap plonk, and the spirits were safely tucked away behind the broad wooden counter. The kid behind the counter was a skinny, freckly, sandy-haired wee mucker, completely out of his depth. He was wearing an Undertones T-shirt, which meant that he couldn’t be all bad.

“Help ya?” he asked, looking up from
Coronation Street
, which was playing on a small black and white TV.

“I’m looking for Poppy Devlin,” I said.

His eyes returned to the TV. “Back room,” he muttered, and then added, “He’s
Mister
Devlin to you, mate.”

I walked through the stacks of beer until I came to a dingy black door with a sign on it that said “Strictly No Admittance.”

I pushed on it and went inside.

Three skinny girls were squeezed onto a fake leather sofa, chain smoking and also watching
Coronation Street
on a TV resting on a glass coffee table. All three girls were pale, heavily made up, and wearing miniskirts. Two of them had bleached blonde hair, one was a natural blonde.

All three were strung out on heroin. None of them looked at me as I came in.

Orla was the natural blonde, but it took a moment or two before I recognized her. She was thin, ghostly, fragile like a porcelain doll. She had track marks on her left arm and cold sores on her mouth. I’d known her only as an annoying little kid on those rare precious occasions when Dermot had allowed me to come over to his house after school. She was the runt of the family. Eight or nine then, twenty-four or twenty-five now. She’d pestered Dermot and me to watch her perform a song she’d written with two of her friends: they were going to be the female, Derry version of the Monkees. The song lasted about twelve bars before it descended into giggles and Dermot, irritated, had summoned me up to his room to show me some novel by Sartre or Camus.