Sacrifice of Fools (20 page)

The place looks like a gun battery. Those tall slit windows will retract and put out big black muzzles. That shallow domed roof will slide back for howitzers and siege mortars. The front line of the war against Romish error. The Verdun of the Reformation. A meaner deity than the God of Shopping Centre inspirits here. The God of Heavy Ordinance. The God of Protestant Armageddon. They want it. They really look forward to that final battle when they drive the forces of Popishness from their holy Israel. No nuns and no priests and no rosary beads, and each day is the twelfth of July. Jesus. But you don’t get a look in here, do you? You’re too soft and forgiving and loving and lefty; these are Old Testament believers.

The church seems to grow taller and wider and heavier as Roisin Dunbar drives across the thousand-space car park. It’s an hour after the end of the morning service but there are still a lot of cars. Dissenting Presbyterianism runs long on Volvos, Rovers and Toyota people movers. All those good little Protestants they’re encouraged to spawn.

‘I bet you feel out of place here.’

‘Any twenty-first-century person would feel out of place here.’

After-service hangers-on stare as Willich and Dunbar come through the brass double doors. The big, cold vestibule is glassed in with illuminated Lives of the Martyrs. Deaths of the Martyrs, more accurately. Above the Junior League of Church Loyalty table a naked, inverted, spreadeagled man is being sawn in half. The books in the wire book carousels are all by McIvor Kyle. They have names like
Thy Quickening Ray,
or
Thy Great Vouchsafefulness,
and photographs of sunsets on the cover. The cassettes in the wooden cassette rack also have pictures of sunsets on their covers, and names like
Ten Studies in Ephesians
or
The Vestments of Royal Priesthood.
Those that aren’t by Reverend McIvor Kyle are by a group of fat men smiling up into a quickening ray from out of the sunset. These men are called the Revival Trumpets.

An usher who smiles far too much directs them to the offices, which are buried like a command bunker under levels of protecting masonry. Roisin Dunbar can’t resist a look into the big church. You could fit an Outsider landing craft under the domed roof. It must be half a mile up to there. The seats are tiered, but she doesn’t see a cinema or a theatre; it’s an arena, a colosseum where dramas of death and blood are acted out every Lord’s Day. Stark white walls, high bright windows. The decor runs to red plush, Bibles, crowns and swords. ‘Ulster for Christ’ says the fresco behind the pulpit. Other way round, surely, Pastor Kyle.

She can’t get the smell of furniture polish out of her nose.

Another over-smiling usher in a too-neat suit tells them the Head of Security is in today. Knock, enter, out with the warrant cards.

‘DCI Willich, and this is DS Dunbar, from Donegal Pass Police Station. We’re making inquiries concerning the murders of five Outsiders in University Street. We’d like to ask you a few questions.’

Hitler in the bunker. No SS defending the German people with their curved, triangular shields, but pictures of beloved Bible stories made horror stories by over-literal painting, superintended by photoportraits of Pastor McIvor Kyle and King Charles III. He visited a Shian sacred space last month, the self-styled Defender of Faith, your semi-divine monarch. Said it was a truly transcendent spiritual experience.

‘Sit, please. Chief Inspector Willich now. Things have changed a bit since last time we met. Can I get you tea, coffee?’

‘Nothing, thank you.’

‘So, how can I help you?’

Willich looks to Dunbar. It’s a game of patience, of laying cards on the table and turning them up, one by one. Card one: a long-lens photograph of Andy Gillespie stolen in the moment it takes him to fumble for the keys to his flat.

‘Do you know this man?’ Dunbar asks.

‘Looks like a man I was inside with.’ He’s up front about that. ‘What was his name? Gillespie?’

‘Did you know him well?’

He shakes his head. ‘Just by name, really.’

‘He’s been in prison. Like you. Do you know what he was inside for?’

‘I understand he was driver on an attempted murder of a drugs dealer on the Newtownards Road in 2001,’ Peterson says. Wise, Dunbar thinks. While you don’t know how much we know, you’ll play along.

‘It was set up by the Third Battalion of the UVF,’ she says.

‘You think that because he was in the paramilitaries, and because your commanding officer put me away for paramilitary activities, we were all best buddies in the Maze?’ Peterson says. ‘That hit was probably against another Loyalist group, UFF, someone like that. They all sold themselves out for drug money. Gangsters, the lot of them. I tell you this, we never, ever, dirtied our hands with drugs.’

‘Have you seen him since your release?’

‘Only on the television; that murder you’re investigating. Do you think he did it?’

Roisin Dunbar takes a long, slow tactical look out of Peterson’s window. The hard wind from off the hills is chasing empty crisp packets round and round in the lee of a buttress. Different climate this side of the city. Three degrees colder in any weather. There must be a pattern to the way the cars come off the motorway on to the Glengormley roundabout. Card two. Ounserrat Soulereya, leaving Pizza Di Action with a pizza box in one hand and her helmet in the other.

‘Do you recognize this Outsider?’

He purses his lips.

‘They all look the same to me. I don’t know any Sheenies. I don’t want to know any.’

‘You’ve never had any contact with Shian?’

‘There was one, in the Maze same time as me. Your friend Gillespie hung around with it a lot. Him and another guy, a Catholic.’ He says the C-word like it’s a bad taste in his mouth. This C-word policewoman’s got you by the balls. You’re smiling, you’re liking it, you’re enjoying the attention because now she’s playing with them, stroking them, tickling them, but you’ll be singing a new song in a higher key when she starts to twist them.

‘Do you know what a frook is, Mr Peterson?’

‘I don’t recognize the word.’

‘A frook is a human with a sexual fixation on the Shian. It takes many forms, but primarily it’s a kind of fetishism.’ Littlejohn mode. Effortless. Willich’s concealing a smile, but she’s watching Peterson’s reaction. ‘Sometimes it’s just a desire to dress Shian fashion, wear body make-up, contact lenses, and be as close as possible to Outsiders. Most often, it’s a desire to have sex with a Shian, male or female, regardless of season. In the more extreme states, they may undergo cosmetic surgery to make themselves look like Shian. It’s a small, close subculture. They have their own clubs, newssheets, Internet bulletin boards, contact magazines.’

‘As a member of a Bible-believing, born-again Church, I find this morally repugnant.’

Twist.

‘But not so morally repugnant that you weren’t at a frook club on Little Howard Street between one thirty and three o’clock this morning.’ Card three. Ace of trumps. She had waited, finger on button, until he stepped from the shadowed door into the full light from the street lamp across the road. Harry Lime moment. No mistaking. No possibility of error. You, you sanctimonious bastard. You. In the window, the Chinese duck swings.

‘Gavin, you were a lying turd then and you’re a lying turd now,’ Willich says. ‘I think we’re going to have to have you down at the station for a wee chat.’

Got his balls, and chained them to the fucking floor.

At five she takes a break for a Diet Coke and a sandwich and a call to Michael that it’s going to be another late nighter. Wee Millie’s got dexies. God knows where from. Dunbar pops a couple with her Diet Coke. She’ll be questioning Peterson from the ceiling of the interview room, but at least the question will make sense. A long slow slash, while she finishes the Coke. Silence. Solitude. Something very settling and centring about bare bum on cold government plastic. This is the moment when, if she smoked, she would smoke. Ready for round two. The dexies must be kicking in already.

It’s way past his quitting time but Littlejohn is lurking outside the ladies.

‘Cracked him yet?’ She really doesn’t want to talk with Littlejohn, here, now. She keeps walking. He keeps step with her. He will talk with her.

‘He admits he was in the club, he even admits he met Andy Gillespie but denies any knowledge of a gun-running ring.’

‘Of course he does. He’s nothing to do with gun-running. You know as well as I that’s complete bullshit.’

‘I got bollocked by Willich for agreeing with you.’

‘At least you still have your soul. Willich isn’t going to get the real story out of our born-again friend Peterson. He’s asking the wrong questions.’

‘Who’s going to ask the right questions? You?’

‘Before I made a career path switch to aliens, I used to be a middling-to-good human psychologist. You don’t lose the old skills. Like riding a bike.’

‘What will you ask him?’

‘Why did he kill five members of the Harridi Nation at University Street on March the second 2004?’

She stops in the corridor ten steps short of Interview Room number three.

‘Get serious.’

‘He fits the profile. I read your files. This washed-in-the-blood praise-the-Lorder blew three Roman Catholics away and would have blown away a whole pother more if Willich hadn’t caught him. Shian are just Taigs with funny haircuts.’

‘And the fact that Gillespie was in the club with him?’

‘Ireland’s a small world; frooks are even smaller. He and the
genro
were following their own investigation. There aren’t that many places for them to look. Peterson was there looking for prey.’

‘You’re grasping at straws. When I found Eamon Donnan, you told me categorically it was him.’

‘Him, someone like him. No shortage of contenders, I’m afraid. This country is the mother of fuck-ups. The facts are Donnan fits the profile, Peterson fits the profile. Half of the male Loyalist population of Belfast fits the profile. But Peterson’s the one you’ve got in your interview room and I know I can crack him, I can find out what he’s really about. Willich can’t.’

Dunbar hands Littlejohn the empty Diet Coke can and the bottom left corner of her tuna and mayo sandwich. There’s onion in it. Great for interview intimidation: onion breath.

‘One thing I know for certain, this has nothing to do with a weapons smuggling conspiracy,’ Littlejohn says, hands full of snack. ‘Rosh, get me ten minutes with him.’

Don’t call me that. She hesitates just a moment before opening the interview room door and going in.

‘DS Dunbar has re-entered the room at seventeen twelve,’ Willich tells the tape. He sighs, lights up another cigarette. The atmosphere already carries a health warning.

‘Would you mind not doing that?’ Peterson says.

‘Since when were you Mr Health and Efficiency?’

‘The body is the temple of the spirit.’

Willich stubs the cigarette out and says, ‘So, try and convince me of this again. If you weren’t attempting to buy Outsider weapons off Andy Gillespie, if you don’t have any connections with the Free Men of Ulster, if you haven’t the least idea what I’m talking about when I mention Cloaks of Shadows, then what the hell were you doing in that frook club?’

‘Maybe he likes them,’ Roisin Dunbar says. ‘Maybe he’s got a wardrobe full of their clothes, maybe he’s got his bedroom wall covered in pin-ups of supermodels. Maybe he’s got a heap of mags and video under the bed. Maybe that’s what he had in the envelope, a porny video.’

‘Is that the best you can do?’ Peterson wears a look of weary disgust. ‘Wee girls pretending they’re Elliot Ness? Well, go on with it. I’m enjoying the show. I’m not under arrest, I haven’t done anything you can charge me with, I just sit here a couple more hours listening to you doing your double act, and then I’m home. Or you could save everyone’s time and let me go and that wee girl home to make her husband his tea.’

‘Boss.’ He’s made her mind up for her now. She was going to leave it, but he’s earned it now. ‘A wee word, outside?’

‘I’m pausing this interview at seventeen seventeen to leave the room temporarily with DS Dunbar.’ Willich hits the pause. A yellow light comes on.

‘Oh aye, this is where the lads with the big sticks come in,’ Peterson says.

Outside, Littlejohn is in the same position she left him. The Coke can and the chewed tuna and mayo have disappeared.

‘Boss, let him do it.’

‘What for? It’s nothing to do with him.’

‘Peterson’s taking the piss out of us. We can’t charge him for being at a frook club, he knows it. Littlejohn’ll scare him.’

‘He’ll eat him with salt.’

‘I know how these people work,’ Littlejohn says.

‘You know fuck.’

‘Had a profitable and enjoyable five hours then?’

‘A change of tack can’t hurt,’ Dunbar says, quick to mollify the breed bulls. Jesus, you can almost smell the testosterone. ‘Boss, with respect, he’s getting back at you for the time you sent him down. He’s playing with you, and you’re just feeding him lines.’

No one moves. No one speaks. On the edge of hearing, the sprinkler drips. Count of twenty, fhlat fhlat fhlat.

‘OK.’ Dunbar close her eyes: a prayer of thanksgiving to the policeperson’s god. ‘But Rosh and me both sit in with you.’

‘Agreed.’

He’s started before Willich can complete the recording formalities.

‘Tell me Gavin, did you ever have greenfly? Did you ever have a house plant and one day you’d see maybe a couple of greenfly at the base of a leaf and next time you looked the thing was crawling with them? No stopping them, was there? And no matter how much you sprayed them, you couldn’t get rid of them completely, could you? They kept breeding, and breeding, and breeding. If you left a greenfly to breed, and nothing ate it or killed it, at the end of one year you’d have so many greenfly that if they stood in a line they’d stretch two and a half thousand light years. Light years, Gavin. Quite something, aren’t they? Wee grubby pasty things you can hardly see, but they’re the winners in the reproduction stakes. Humans can manage one new human every year, and it’s thirteen years minimum before they can breed new humans. Greenfly’ve got us well beaten. No wonder you have to keep them under control. If they can reach halfway to the centre of the galaxy in one year, how long before they take over the world?’