‘Afraid’s got nothing to do with it,’ she said, her face hardening. ‘People should stick by their own. My God, trying to kill someone the same sort as you. If you can’t trust your own kind, who can you trust, hmm?’
Lennon forced a smile and slid his hands from beneath hers. ‘I’m glad you feel that way.’
A knock at the door broke the moment. Chief Inspector Uprichard leaned in.
‘Can I have a minute?’ he asked.
DCI Dan Hewitt sat to the side of Uprichard’s desk, watching Lennon. Hewitt and Lennon had come through Garnerville together. Hewitt had progressed higher in the ranks, despite being a year younger than Lennon at thirty-six. He was smart, always playing the angles, and well suited to the covert work of C3 Intelligence Branch. While Lennon struggled his way into C2 Serious Crime, Hewitt eased into the shiny new replacement for Special Branch. In the reborn police force, cleaned and polished for the post-ceasefire Northern Ireland, there was no longer any need for the cops to have their very own secret service.
Except everyone knew that’s exactly what C3 was, and many continued to call them Special Branch, unless they were filling out a form or talking to the press. The officers of C3 still worked in sealed rooms, locked away from their colleagues, protected by a wall of silence and number pads on the doors. Only ten years ago, Special Branch saved countless lives by running informants, mounting surveillance operations, and making life difficult for the paramilitaries. But they played dirty, as did MI5 and the army’s Fourteen Intelligence Company. Every agency ran its own operations, sometimes co-operating, more often not. All of them worked in the cracks between the law and the necessary, and all of them had blood on their hands. Some felt the peace process rendered the likes of Special Branch at best obsolete, at worst a dangerous relic of the quasi-military role the police had played in this place for thirty-odd years. Others felt the force-within-a-force still had a vital job to do while the paramilitaries remained on the streets. Lennon wasn’t sure which side of the argument he came down on. It depended on whom he was most pissed off with at any given time: C3 or their enemies.
Uprichard rocked his chair back and forth. The creaking gnawed at Lennon’s nerves.
‘What?’ he asked.
Uprichard fidgeted.
Hewitt scratched his chin.
‘What?’ Lennon asked again.
Uprichard looked at Hewitt. ‘You wanted to see him, not me.’
Hewitt sighed. ‘How solid is it?’
Lennon looked from one man to the other. ‘How solid is what?’
‘The case against Rankin.’
Lennon laughed. Hewitt’s frown deepened. The laugh died in Lennon’s throat. ‘You’re serious?’
Hewitt raised his eyebrows and waited.
‘I have a witness who saw him knife Crozier and is willing to testify to it. I’ve got a victim who can identify him when he’s fit. I’ve got a weapon with Crozier’s blood and Rankin’s prints on it. I’ve got the blood on his clothes. Do I need to go on?’
Hewitt’s face reddened. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘There’s no way to spin it?’
Lennon sat forward. ‘Spin it? Nothing short of a time machine is going to keep Dandy Andy Rankin out of Maghaberry. Unless I’ve missed something, I’d have thought putting Rankin away was, you know, good.’
‘Not for everyone,’ Hewitt said. ‘Look, do you have to put attempted murder to the PPS? What about GBH? A fight that got out of hand. No intent to kill.’
Lennon swallowed anger. ‘Go over to the City Hospital and take a look at the hole in Crozier’s throat. Tell me Rankin didn’t try to kill him. He’s lucky he didn’t hit the—’
‘It couldn’t have been self-defence? There was a lot of confusion at the scene. Did you identify yourself properly as a police officer?’
‘I identified myself. Jesus, he had poor Sylvia Burrows with a knife to her throat.’
‘Fuck,’ Hewitt said.
Lennon sat back. ‘Can someone explain to me how bagging a piece of shit like Rankin could possibly be a bad thing?’
Uprichard coughed. ‘Well, Jack, you know our colleagues in C3 move in mysterious ways. They often have information that us ordinary officers don’t. There may be wider implications to this, other operations that might be comp—’
‘Rankin exercises a huge amount of control over his patch of Belfast,’ Hewitt said, ignoring the look of annoyance on Uprichard’s face. ‘He keeps everyone in line, keeps the dealers away from kids, stops the local boys from cutting each other’s throats. He may be a piece of shit, I won’t disagree with you there, but he’s a useful piece of shit.’
‘Is he an informant?’
Hewitt tilted his head. ‘You know better than to ask me that, Jack.’
‘Is he? Is he a tout?’
‘That’s none of your concern. Listen, Rankin keeps discipline among his boys, something the Loyalists have always lacked. It’s the same on your side of the fence. When McKenna and McGinty got killed, the whole Republican movement could have torn itself apart, but the leadership clamped down, kept them in check.’
‘What the fuck do you mean, my side of the fence?’
‘Now, Jack,’ Uprichard said, his tone ominous.
‘I just mean you’re a Catholic, you’re from that community,’ Hewitt said, showing his palms.
Lennon went to rise from his chair, with no idea what he’d do next, but Uprichard said, ‘Jack, please, let the man finish.’
Lennon sat down and locked his fingers together.
Hewitt smiled. ‘You know how tight a ship the Republicans run. The Loyalists aren’t like that. They’d kill each other’s grannies to get ahead. We take a stabilising force like Rankin out of the community, Christ knows what might happen.’
Lennon stared hard at Hewitt. ‘Is this you talking, or the Northern Ireland Office?’
‘Inflicting grievous bodily harm, Jack. GBH. He’ll do time, even if he pleads, which I guarantee he will. You’ll put Rankin away. It’ll be on record as your arrest, your case. It’ll look good for you, how you performed under pressure, how you carried out first aid on Rankin and Crozier, how you stopped that old dear getting cut up. There could be a commendation in it for you. You can interview Rankin at the hospital when the doctors say he’s fit, see if he’ll give you any dirt you can follow up on. I wouldn’t be surprised if you got back on a Major Investigation Team.’
Lennon kept staring. ‘GBH with intent.’
‘No,’ Hewitt said. ‘That could be a life sentence if he gets the wrong judge.’
‘He’ll only get five with GBH, probably less if he cooperates. That means two and a half at most if he behaves himself inside. He’ll do a chunk of that on remand.’
Hewitt stared back. ‘I’ll make sure the PPS push for the maximum.’
‘Will you shite,’ Lennon said.
Uprichard said, ‘DCI Gordon has a space coming up on his MIT. Charlie Stinson is going to South Africa for a year on placement. I’m sure Gordon could use you.’
Lennon’s mind lingered on that idea. DCI Gordon led the best Major Investigation Team in the city.
You were the smartest one out of the lot of us back at Garnerville,’ Hewitt said. ‘Smarter than me, even. Don’t cause yourself grief over a shit-pile like Rankin. Besides, you can’t claim any moral high ground given your recent history. You got off light with that Patterson business. You owe me a favour.’
Lennon buried his face in his hands.
‘Fuck,’ he said.
6
Sometimes dreams followed Gerry Fegan into waking. He knew the border between his mind and the world beyond was solid, but the dreams had a way of crossing over. Just a few months ago, he drowned his terrors with whiskey every night. Now that he was sober they flourished, swelled, grew until they rubbed against his daylight hours.
