Shadow Sins (DCI Wilson Book 2) (12 page)

“Thanks for your support,” Wilson removed a five-pound note from his pocket and handed it to the waiter who had deposited a fresh pint of Guinness in front of him. “The evidence will be clear enough, but this enquiry will be about spin. And I assure you that nobody can spin as well as Roy Jennings.”

“But you have an ace in the hole. You have Kate McCann in your corner. Nobody is going to pull the wool over her eyes where you’re concerned.”

Wilson sipped the creamy-white head off the Guinness. Moira was right. Kate would make mincemeat of Jennings and having her on board might be the only reason why the bastard might drop the enquiry idea.

“How are things with you and Kate?” Moira said casually.

“I wish I had met her twenty years ago. If I had, I don’t think that I would be in this position now.” Wilson’s mobile phone did its merry dance on the table in front of him.

He glanced quickly at the caller ID and pushed the green phone button.

“Hi,” he said with faked hilarity.

“I heard,” Kate said on the other end of the line. “That must have been horrible for you. I’ve cleared my schedule for the afternoon, and I’m on my way home. I guess you’re drowning your sorrows in some hostelry or other but I want you to come home immediately. I’m organising lunch and I want to throw my arms around you.”

Moira started to stand, but Wilson motioned her down. “I’m so sorry for Joe’s family. I feel I let them down.”

“Finish whatever drink you’re on and haul your behind back to the apartment. I can see that you’re in sore need of consoling.”

“Your wish is my command. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Kate,” Wilson said simply as he broke the connection.

“I know,” Moira rose. “I should get back to the Station. I don’t have your exalted rank, so I can’t just vanish. Get off home and don’t show your face until tomorrow.”

“I feel like a little boy being ordered around by the women in my life.”

‘Tomorrow,” Moira said as she turned and headed for the door. She was smiling at being called a woman in Wilson’s life. She liked that thought.

Wilson stood at the door of the Crown and looked along Great Victoria Street. He had left his car at the Station and considering the amount of alcohol he had consumed, he had no intention of driving home. He was looking around for a taxi when a black cab with its for hire sign off pulled up beside him. The back door opened and Wilson was about to enter when he saw that there were already two men in the back.

“Need a lift,” the man seated in the far corner of the cab said.

Wilson hesitated at the door of the cab. The man who had just invited him inside was none other than Willie Rice, a former Loyalist paramilitary leader and currently one of the gang bosses who ran the rackets in Belfast. The second man sitting on the jump seat facing the back seat was Richie Simpson.

“Don’t worry,” Rice said noticing Wilson’s hesitation. “We won’t bite you. We only want tae have a wee word with you on the way to your new lodgings. And there’s no fare to pay.”

Wilson stepped into the cab and pulled the door shut behind him. He was directly facing Simpson but in this company Sammy Rice was the bull goose. “What’s on your mind?” Wilson said turning to look at Rice. The tan hadn’t come from a bottle but the blond hair had. There were enough gold chains around the gang boss’ neck to warrant a separate room in Fort Knox. A solid gold Rolex adorned his left hand. Life was good in the new Northern Ireland.

“Richie tells me that you paid him a visit the other day concerning the church burning and the dead priest. It looks like your tryin’ to lay the blame on us.”

“And who would ‘us’ be in this case?” Wilson asked.

“The Prods,” Rice sat back against the seat. “Word has it that you want to pin the Roman’s death on some poor Prod or other.”

“It would seem to be the logical conclusion,” Wilson looked out the window of the cab and saw that they were indeed moving in the direction of his lodgings as Rice had called it. He began to relax. He knew he was in the company of men who should by right be spending a long stretch in jail for multitudinous crimes. Except that both had been pardoned after the Good Friday Agreement and now that Simpson was a minor politician and Rice was a gang boss who had removed himself from the action. Putting either of them away again was going to be no easy matter. This was life in the Ulster of the Twenty-first Century. “Anyway, why should the direction of our enquiry bother you?”

“Fist off,” Rice looked directly into Wilson’s eyes. “None of our people were involved. Okay, in the past we torched a few Taig churches, and they retaliated by torching some Orange Halls, but we both realised that it was getting us nowhere fast. After your little confab with Richie, we put the word out that we wanted whoever was involved. I don’t have to tell you that when I ask a question I better get an answer. The result is that none of our boys was involved. These days we don’t do anything that bad for business.” Rice smiled showing a couple of gold teeth.

Wilson looked at Simpson who simply nodded.

“So you can call your dogs off and look somewheres else for the boy who did the priest,” Rice said continuing to stare at Wilson.

The cab was now travelling along Stranmillis Embankment.

“You can let me out here,” Wilson said.

“Pull over,” Rice shouted and the driver instantly pulled to the curb and stopped. “Your no fool, Mister Wilson, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind man. I’m not sayin’ that the priest wasn’t killed by a Prod but what I am sayin’ is that nobody who is connected was involved. So I’d be grateful if you’d tell your lads to keep themselves out of my business.”

“Thanks for the lift,” Wilson pushed the door open and climbed out of the cab. “I’ll bear what you said in mind.”

CHAPTER 30

A mist of rain was falling as Noel Mulholland hid in the shrubbery in the garden of the substantial house on the Glen Road not far from the Christian Brothers School. It took him some time to locate the whereabouts of Father Fergus Reilly. He looked at the two-story bay-windowed house that acted as a retirement home for priests who had been put out to pasture. A little work on the Internet at the City Library and some phone calls led him to the house in whose garden he now squatted. Thankfully, an earlier owner was an avid gardener because the house was surrounded by a mass of trees and shrubs that acted as perfect cover.  They served to keep the rain off his old worn overcoat. He had come to terms with the fact that he was a killer and also with the fact that he would have to kill again. A flash of pain ran through his skull. He felt in his pocket and removed his pillbox. He removed two coloured pills and put them in his mouth. The lights in the house were extinguished one by one and the building was cloaked in darkness. He had already sussed out the inside. He had dropped by the kitchen several days before begging for food. The door had been opened by an old doll who had spent her life looking after priests. She was attached to her charges and was happy to discuss them over a cup of tea. Father Reilly occupied the first floor bedroom at the rear. That room was the focus of Mulholland’s attention. It was in complete darkness.

Father Fergus Reilly lay in bed waiting for sleep to close another boring day. He was the youngest retired priest in the house and he sometimes wondered why he had been considered too old to manage a parish. Vocations were way down in the country generally and there had been no real reason why a sprightly eighty year old like him had been dumped into the geriatric home.  The other residents usually slipped off asleep from seven o’clock on. Two were bedridden and waiting for their Maker to call on them while the other three residents were not too far behind them. Father Reilly considered that he had the constitution of a horse. He ate everything that was put in front of him, and he was religious about his four-mile walk every day come rain or shine. He could still read without the aid of glasses, and he was busying himself on the Internet looking into the history of the Reilly family. He thought that perhaps there might be a book in it. He’d show the Bishop that there was still life in the old dog yet.

The light in the first floor back bedroom was extinguished for more than an hour. Father Reilly would be fast asleep by now. Mulholland moved out of his lair and straightened himself up. The bushes, which formed the barrier between the priest’s house and the adjoining houses, screened him from view. He moved quietly to the back kitchen door.  The lock was a simple one and the door was open in seconds. There was no alarm. The priests worked on the basis that they had nothing much to steal so they would be left alone. He stopped for a minute inside the door. The only sound in the house was the heavy snoring of the residents. He moved silently from the kitchen into the hallway and up the stairs taking care not to make any sound. He stood again for a minute on the first floor landing and listened. Sounds of loud snoring came from several of the rooms. There was no sound from Father Reilly’s room. Mulholland moved to the door and slowly turned the handle. He wore a pair of woollen mittens since his prints were on file. The door swung open without a sound. There was no time for thought. He removed his knife from inside his coat and moved quickly to the bed. He stared down at the form of the sleeping priest. He had only met the man once so he didn’t really recognise him. But there could be only one Father Fergus Reilly, who had served in the Belfast Diocese. He bent down and grasped the sleeping priest by the hair. He pulled the head back and ran the knife along the priest’s throat. As soon as the knife had finished its travel, Mulholland removed his hand from the priest’s hair and placed it over his mouth.

Father Reilly’s eyes opened wide, and he tried to scream but no sound came from his mouth. He felt the pain in his throat, and he could feel the warm blood running down his neck. He looked into the darkness, and saw the shape of a man looming over him. He had been visited by the Angel of Death was the last thought that ran through his mind.

As soon as Mulholland felt the priest go slack, he released his hand from the priest’s mouth. He cleaned the knife on the bedspread and immediately left the room. Killing was so easy, he thought as he made his way down the stairs. It was a wonder how murderers got caught. He went to the back door, closed and locked it before making his way to the end of the garden, and escaping across the house directly behind.

CHAPTER 31

Wilson slept fitfully. Kate did her best to apply logic to his situation. He hadn’t been responsible for organising the Worthington’s arrest, and he had certainly not been derelict in his duty by permitting the Superintendent to re-enter his house. The suicide had nothing to do with him. But in Wilson’s mind it had. He could have refused to allow Joe back into the house. He knew the man was unhinged. Joe’s future would be a nightmare for both him and his family. He had fucked up in spades and suicide would have been the obvious solution to limit the pain. One instant with the gun in your mouth against months and possibly years of torment. The decision was probably very easy to make and should have been equally possible for him to foresee. So he had fucked up and there was a strong possibility that an enquiry orchestrated by DCC Jennings would come to the same conclusion. The question was did he really care what conclusion the enquiry would come to? If they found him guilty of dereliction of duty, he would be stripped of his rank. He would probably be permitted to remain in the Force but he would certainly resign. In a way that was a satisfactory conclusion. The decision on his continued membership of the Force would be taken out of his hands. It might end up as a case of heads I win, tails you lose.

He had been awake since three o’clock, and he had spent the early-morning hours staring out through the large picture window at the nightlight of Belfast. The city looked beautiful from his vantage point. Light of varying colours dappled the street and the building in the central business district. The Lagan River flowed directly beneath him with the reflected light from the buildings dazzling the dark grey blue waters. He loved Belfast. The bright lights and the darkness hid the Victorian grime of the tightly packed streets. He was aware more than most of the sickness that lay beneath the view that extended before him. Terrible crimes were perpetrated in those streets, most of them in the name of religion. The relics of those crimes were clearly visible in a population that feared a return to chaos. Gradually, the light over the city brightened and at an instant the street-lights were extinguished, and the city was revealed as it really was–a dark forbidding place.  He watched as the dawn light grew brighter until the city was illuminated not by the electricity that hid its warts but by clear light which exposed all its faults.

He suddenly had the feeling that he was being watched and turned quickly to find Kate standing behind him.

“Tough night,” she said as she planted herself in his lap. Her kimono slid open to reveal her perfectly formed legs.

“One of many,” Wilson smiled and held her close kissing her on the nose.

“I missed you in bed.”

“I didn’t think that I woke you when I got up.“

“I felt you leave but I got the feeling that you wanted to be alone.”

“That’s the kind of sensitivity that women are famous for and that men can’t seem to match. I suppose this is my way of mourning for Joe. I’ve seen too much grief in others to be the tearful type and anyway Joe and myself were not exactly the best of friends. There’ll be a wake but I think I should give that a miss. His wife and children might not appreciate my presence. So a few hours spent in quiet contemplation seemed like a good compromise.”

“You a fine man, Ian Wilson,” she pulled his head to her breast.

“So you keep telling me,” he kissed both of her breasts.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“Later,” he pulled her close and kissed her hard on the lips. “My mourning period is over. I’ll make the coffee but first I need something to get me through the day.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” she said as she slipped the knot on the belt that held her kimono shut.

They sat at the breakfast bar eating toast and drinking coffee. They made love all over the living room without bothering to pull the curtains on the picture window. Maybe somewhere across the river there was a telescope trained on their living room. If that was the case, whoever had set it up was getting full value for their efforts. Wilson had attacks of paranoia after the Dungrey affair. He knew that the spooks were out there, and he knew they would be watching him. He knew about their dirty game, and that made him a loose end. It was an open secret that he wasn’t to be trusted, so it was inevitable that the anorak man and his friends from Thames House would keep tabs on him for a while. The paranoia had faded and right now Wilson didn’t give a damn about the watchers.

“That was fun,” Kate said polishing off her coffee and toast. “Now I need to shower. I’ll have to give this place a dash of Fabreeze. The smell of sex in this place is overwhelming and the cleaning lady comes to-day.“ She wrapped her kimono around her and headed for the bathroom.

Wilson popped another capsule into the coffee machine. He would need several jolts of caffeine before this day was out. His phone rang just as the machine completed its cycle.

He pressed the green speak button. “DCI Wilson.” He listened while the Duty Sergeant filled him in on the preliminary information concerning the murder in the Glen Road.

“Send a car around in fifteen minutes. Call Harry Graham and tell him to meet me at the scene.” He drank his coffee and made his way to the bathroom.

“Room for two?” he said as he stepped into the shower with Kate.