dry and barren place, crawling in the dirt, hunting his prey. Iraq, maybe Afghanistan. Maybe somewhere the Yanks and the Brits would never admit to. And now he was here, not far from the Irish border, his sun-scorched face blank and unyielding. Just another job.
‘You’re not a peeler,’ McSorley said.
The cop’s hard smile didn’t even flicker. ‘Where are you headed today, sir?’
‘I said, you’re no peeler. What do you want?’
Footsteps scuffled behind the two vehicles. Something screeched and groaned as it was dragged along the floor of the van. Voices issued orders, hissed and strained. The cop’s eyes never left McSorley’s.
A voice said, ‘On three. One, two, three – hup!’
The Focus lurched and leaned back on its rear axle as something monstrously heavy was dumped in the boot.
‘What the fuck was that?’ Comiskey asked.
Hughes turned in the seat, but the parcel shelf blocked his vision. McSorley watched shifts in the light in his rear-view mirror. He wanted to weep, but smothered the urge. He heard more scuffling, then the thudding of feet clambering back into the van. The car’s boot lid slammed down, and McSorley saw the woman cop through the back window, along with a heavy-set man. The parcel shelf didn’t quite find home; something pushed it up from beneath.
The woman cop carried a long sports bag. The heavy-set man raised an automatic rifle. It looked like the Heckler & Koch G3 McSorley had fired behind a Newry pub years before. The man approached from the driver’s side, keeping the rifle on McSorley.
McSorley felt the heat of tears rising behind his eyes. Fuck if he’d cry. He swallowed them. The rear passenger side door opened. He looked back over his shoulder.
The woman cop reached in and dropped something metallic. Its weight thudded on the carpet between Hughes’s feet.
‘Oh, fuck,’ Hughes said. He scuttled sideways, behind McSorley, away from whatever lay there.
She tossed something else in. It clanked against the first object.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Hughes said, his voice rising into a breathy whine.
The woman drew a pair of long cylinders from the bag. McSorley stared at them for a moment, his brain struggling to catch up with what he saw, before he recognised the twin barrels of a shotgun. She placed it butt-first into the footwell, letting the long barrels fall across Hughes’s thigh.
‘Fuck me, they’re guns,’ Hughes said as the door swung shut. ‘What’s going on, Eugene?’
McSorley looked back to the tanned cop. The cop smiled, winked, and closed the driver’s door. He held up the car key, showed it to McSorley, and thumbed it twice. The locks whirred and clunked. The cop placed the key on the bonnet, just beneath the glass.
‘Christ,’ McSorley said.
‘What are they doing, Eugene?’ Comiskey asked.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’ McSorley crossed himself. His bladder screamed for release. He fought it.
The two cops, who McSorley knew were not cops at all, got back into the Skoda and pulled away. The van eased in front of the Focus. The man with the rifle grinned at McSorley. He kept the gun trained on him as he climbed into the open back.
Comiskey tried the handle. ‘Open the locks,’ he said.
‘Can’t,’ McSorley said. Tears warmed his cheeks. ‘The bastard double-locked it. You need the key to open it.’
The van moved off, picking up speed. The man with the rifle waved. McSorley’s bladder gave out.
‘Oh, God,’ McSorley said. ‘Jesus, boys.’
Comiskey slammed the window with his elbow. He tried it again. Hughes lifted the shotgun and rammed the butt against the rear window.
McSorley knew it was pointless. ‘Oh, Christ, boys.’
Hughes hit the window once more, and it shattered. He lurched to the opening. Comiskey scrambled to climb back and follow.
Waves of rainwater smeared the windscreen as the van grew smaller in the distance. Hughes roared as he forced his shoulders through the gap.
‘Jesus,’ McSorley whispered. ‘Jesus, boys, they killed us.’
He barely registered the detonator’s POP! before God’s fist slammed him into nothing.
2
Detective Inspector Jack Lennon knew it was shit work, but the choice had been made clear: keep an eye on Dandy Andy Rankin and Rodney Crozier as they met in a greasy spoon cafe on Sandy Row, or spend the rest of the week typing up notes for the Public Prosecution Service. His buttocks still ached from the stint of PPS donkey work they’d dumped on him last year. He didn’t fancy another taste.
The information had been passed along from C3, or Special Branch as most people knew them. Rankin and Crozier, two of Belfast’s leading Loyalists, were to meet at Sylvia’s to try to settle an argument that had so far put five men in hospital. One had lost an eye, another was breathing through a tube in his throat, but no one had died yet. The plan was to keep it that way.
Spats between the Loyalists were a constant nuisance. Every few weeks a thug or two would turn up with his head broken over some quarrel or other. But sometimes the spats boiled over and people got killed. No one on the force cared too much if the odd drug dealer got taken out, but it would rile the politicians and the press, not to mention the paperwork it would generate. So it was best to keep tabs on things, try to head off trouble at the pass. That’s what Chief Inspector Uprichard had said when he assigned Lennon the job. Lennon had been at a loose end since he’d lost his place on the Major Investigation Team, so this sort of busywork was the best he could hope for. Observe and report, see who’s talking to whom, judge if the exchanges are friendly or heated, make sure it’s not something that could escalate.
Lennon watched the cafe from a van with Water Board markings. He’d parked up in a side street across the way, put a lunch box and a flask on the dashboard, and opened a copy of the
Rankin and Crozier sat by the window. Lennon could see them clear as day, but could only imagine their conversation. There was no money in the pot for bugging the place. The pair were only of mild interest to Special Branch, so did not merit the budget. This was strictly eyeball duty, nothing more. Yep, Lennon thought, shit work. Part of him wondered if they just wanted to get him out of the office.
The targets huddled together, their proximity suggesting soft voices, even if the expressions on their faces did not. Crozier wore a Glasgow Rangers football top, his tattoos blurring on his thick forearms. Rankin sported a grey suit with a pink shirt, open at the collar to display his heavy gold chain. His teeth looked unnaturally white against his orange tan. Sylvia Burrows, the cafe’s proprietor since it had opened in the early Seventies, placed two steaming mugs between the men. She did not linger to make chitchat. The men barely acknowledged her.
Lennon scribbled on the pad in his lap and looked at his watch. Twenty minutes now since he’d pulled up, ten since Crozier had arrived, no more than five since Rankin had joined him. Lennon yawned and stretched. Maybe the PPS paperwork wouldn’t have been so bad.
Just a few weeks ago he’d been on a Major Investigation Team, second to DCI Jim Thompson. Good work, proper police graft befitting his rank. He’d pissed it away over a bloody speeding penalty he’d tried to get quashed for that piece of shit Roscoe Patterson. The traffic cop, Constable Joseph Moore, had come over all self-righteous when Lennon tackled him.
It wasn’t the sixty quid, Lennon had explained, money wasn’t the issue. Roscoe had plenty of money. Lennon might have said that last part twice, he couldn’t quite remember. The issue was the three points Roscoe couldn’t afford on his licence. Things got heated when Moore, one of the newer Catholic recruits filling up the ranks since the Patten reforms, questioned why Lennon would stick his neck out for a Hun bastard like Roland ‘Roscoe’ Patterson. Lennon knew he shouldn’t have grabbed Moore’s throat and pushed him against the wall, and he apologised the next day. He didn’t know, however, that Moore had gone to CI Uprichard and claimed Lennon had tried to pass on
