Two more heavy bangs on the side of the Land Rover and stray bullets dinging into the pavement. Originally Divis Tower and the whole Divis Flats complex around it had been a model slum-clearance project but it quickly degenerated into a high-rise ghetto completely controlled by the IRA.
“What the fuck is that?” Brennan yelled.
“Fifty calibre machine gun, sir,” Sergeant McCallister replied placidly. “Seen ‘em in the army, unmistakable.”
“Jesus! Can it punch a hole in the armour plate?” Brennan asked.
“Maybe. I don’t really know,” McCallister replied.
Brennan turned round to look at the four of us in the back. His eyes were wild with excitement. I didn’t like it.
“All right, lads and lasses, we’ll deploy out the back, train your fire on the muzzle bursts, that’ll give the bastards something to think about!” Brennan said as more of the fifty-cal tore up the road all around us (difficult to aim those things, I would imagine).
Sergeant McCallister looked at me and shook his head.
He didn’t want to say anything but he hoped I would.
“Uh, sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea. They’re probably waiting with an RPG. As soon as we open these back doors they’ll fire it and we’re all cooked,” I said, thinking that one of us had to say something.
“We can’t just let him shoot at us!” Heather said, her cheeks redder than ever with her blood up.
“No, by God, we can’t! We’ll teach them a lesson they’ll never forget!” Brennan answered her.
“Sir, we can’t fire into Divis Tower. It’s full of people,” I said.
“Sir, it’s actually a standing order for West Belfast, the rules of engagement do not permit return fire into the Divis Flats complex without permission of a Divisional Commander,” Sergeant McCallister added firmly.
There was another burst of fifty cal fire that shook us and sent fragments of steel plate sheering from the Land Rover’s side. It was like being inside a pin-ball machine.
Inside a pin-ball machine with the added frisson of imminent death.
The reserve constable whose name I didn’t get began throwing up between his legs.
“So what do you suggest, ya lily-livered scoundrels?” Brennan yelled.
“Sir, if they hit a tyre we’ll be stuck here so I suggest we drive around the bus and then maybe call the army, this is more their scene,” I said.
“Just fucking leave! What about the big picture? We’re here to enforce law and order. We can’t run away from every bloody fight.”
Yet, much to Brennan’s chagrin, run away we did.
We drove round the burning bus, reported the shooting to the army and sat in humiliated silence all the way back to Carrickfergus Police Station.
We parked the Rover and were all very impressed by the big chunks the fifty-cal had carved in the armour plate.
My good kit had a stink of vomit in it now, so I stripped it off, changed into my jeans and desk-drawer emergency Deep Purple concert T-shirt. I got one of the bored looking reserve constables to leave my suit at the dry cleaners and cornered Sergeant McCallister at the coffee machine. “Did you make that thing up about the rules of engagement?”
He nodded. “Of course I did. How would I bloody know the rules of engagement for West Belfast?”
I made a mug of sweet Irish breakfast tea for Constable Fitzgerald and gave it to her when she came out of the ladies toilets, looking pale and trembly.
“That was some fun today, wasn’t it?” I said.
She took the tea gratefully. “I’ve never been in a gun battle before,” she said.
“Not really a battle if only one side was shooting,” I said.
She was walking to the gloomy area for the reservists but I led her over to my desk by the window. “Sit over here where there’s light,” I said.
I let her rest her cute bum on my leather swivel chair.
“You have a nice view,” she said.
The tide was out and the beach was littered with shopping trolleys, beer cans, plastic bags, decaying seaweed, the remains of a Ford Escort which had been driven off the Fisherman’s Quay in 1978, dead fish, dead jellyfish, raw sewage and oil.
“Aye, it’s a lovely view,” I replied.
She sipped the tea appreciatively.
“This is good, what is it?” I explained the arcane secrets of the Tetley tea bag.
“So where are you from?” I asked.
“Greenisland now, Islandmagee originally,” she said.
“Is Islandmagee nice?”
“It’s very nice. When you go there it’s almost as if there are no Troubles.”
“I’d love to visit some time.”
She put down the tea and picked up one of my arrow and question mark-filled pieces of A4 paper. I had written in block capitals: “HOW DID HE SELECT HIS VICTIMS?”
“How did he select his victims?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but if we can find out then we might-”
There was a tap on my shoulder. It was McCrabban. He was smiling sleekitly at me. “Sorry to interrupt your
“Excuse me,” I said to Heather and pushed the button on line #4.
“Is that Sergeant Duffy?” a voice asked.
“Who’s this?”
“You don’t need to know my name, but we met earlier today,” he said.
Flunky #2.
“Go on,” I said.
“Tommy Little had a boyfriend. His name is Walter Hays. I don’t where he’s living now. We kicked him out.”
I wrote it down in my notepad. “Walter Hays. Got it. I’ll find him. Thank you,” I said.
Flunky #2 didn’t hang up.
“Is there anything else?” I asked hopefully.
“I read the
“Yes …”
“Tommy Little was not a man to hide anything. Everybody knew Tommy Little was queer.”
I didn’t see where he was going with this. “Ok, so what does that mean?”
“So you have to ask yourself, Sergeant Duffy, why were Tommy Little’s proclivities tolerated?”
“Why were his proclivities tolerated? What are you trying to say-”
But then it came to me. If Tommy Little was only an occasional driver for Sinn Fein officials he would have been kneecapped and drummed out of the movement long ago.
But he wasn’t an occasional driver, was he?
“They were tolerated because Tommy Little was important. Tommy was a player, that’s it, isn’t it?”
“Have a good evening, Sergeant Duffy.”
The line went dead.
I grabbed Crabbie and Matty and took them into one of the interview rooms and told them what had happened.
“What does this mean?” Matty asked.
“It means, Matty, that the RUC files are wrong about Tommy Little. That’s what it means. He was big,” Crabbie said.
“I want you to find out how important. I want you to bug Special Branch and MI5 and army intelligence if you have to. Somebody knows who this guy was and I want to know too,” I said.
Matty nodded.
I turned to McCrabban. “And you and I are going to find out where Walter Hays is living now and we are
