“No one gives a crap about this particular murder. Everybody wants it to go away,” Lawson grumbled.
What age was Lawson now? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? How did he get so old so quick?
“You’re dismissed, Lawson.”
After he’d left the office I poured Crabbie a glass of the sixteen-year-old Bowmore. “You really want to quit and leave him in charge? Dalziel running the station and him running CID?”
“I thought you liked him.”
“I do like him, but if we both go this place is doomed.”
Crabbie looked out the window at the rain lashing the Belfast docks. “It’s all doomed anyway.”
The phone rang.
“Inspector Duffy, CID,” I said.
“This is Stephen O’Toole from the Belfast Telegraph, we’re running a wee story this afternoon about police harassment of elected Sinn Fein councillors, care to comment?”
“Not much to say about that, Mr O’Toole, we here at Carrick RUC have excellent relations with all the elected representatives in Northern Ireland.”
“So you’re denying that you have a policy of harassing Sinn Fein councillors?”
“There is no such policy. Sometimes we have to question councillors or judges or even journalists in the course of an investigation but that’s all. I don’t have the time or inclination to harass anyone.”
“Thanks very much, Inspector Duffy.”
“Anytime.”
He hung up. Crabbie gave me the old raised left eyebrow. “Trouble?” he asked.
“I hope not.”
The story, when it appeared that afternoon, did not mention my name at all, but if I’d been a bit smarter I would have realised that this was merely a shot across the bows. Harry Selden was a man with pull.
Two days after the Michael Stone incident there was another horrific encounter on live TV. Two British army corporals from the signals regiment took a wrong turn into another IRA funeral. When they tried to reverse out of the street, the crowd seized them, pulled them from their cars, stripped them and lynched them on live TV.
That night the Protestant and Catholic districts of Belfast both came out in riot.
Beth was shocked. She had only hazy memories of the early 70s. She didn’t know things could get this bad.
“Maybe building this house is a bad idea, Sean, maybe what’s best for Emma is to get out of Ireland completely.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything’s falling apart. All the smart people are getting out. Both my brothers have gone, Dad’s thinking of selling the business.”
“I’ll admit to having had similar thoughts.”
“Is it too late for you to get into the Met?”
“The Metropolitan Police? Yeah, it’s too late. I’m thirty-eight now. They don’t take new recruits aged thirty-eight.”
“But you’re not a new recruit, you could join as a detective, as a detective inspector.”
“I knew one guy who managed to pull that off,” I said thinking of Tony McIlroy. “But for that to work you need influence.”
“Daddy’s rich.”
“I mean influence over the water. The Met’s not going to take me … What would you do in London?”
“Anything. As long as it was safe. Look at Kenneth Branagh’s parents. They did the right thing. They got him out.”
“You might be right, Beth,” I said reflectively. “I’ve done my bit here in Northern Ireland and I’ve achieved nothing.”
Next day I let Crabbie and Lawson volunteer for this mythical quadruple-time riot pay while I drove up to Derry again and parked the car just down the street from Councillor Selden’s house.
I followed him on his rounds to the Sinn Fein Advice Centre and to the Spar Supermarket and to the butchers. Nothing interesting. Nothing untoward. But a couple of times he doubled back to see if he was being followed, which was interesting.
I drove over to the infamous Strand Road police station, introduced myself and asked for the intel officer. A Detective Sergeant called Linda Quinn (a woman and a Catholic no less) gave me some interesting stuff about Selden that wasn’t in the files.
“Oh yes, we’re pretty sure that Selden’s a player,” she said with satisfaction, in a soft County Armagh accent.
“IRA?”
“IRA indeed.”
“How high up?”
“Oh, not very high. He’s getting on a bit. Forty-three, I think. If you haven’t made command by forty you sort of take a back seat.”
“What about DAADD?”
“What’s that?”
“Direct Action Against Drug Dealers.”
“Oh yes, those fellows. No, they don’t have much of a presence in Derry. For the moment anyway. DAADD’s more of a Belfast group. Up here the IRA just kills or kneecaps the drug dealers that have upset them. They don’t need a cover organisation in Derry, they’ve already got the public on their side.”
“I know, I almost joined myself after Bloody Sunday.”
“So that’s something you and Selden have in common, then.”
“What?”
“He was in the police. He joined the IRA after Bloody Sunday.”
“He was in the police?”
“Didn’t you know that?”
“No.”
“Well, not the real police, the B Specials.”
“The B Specials?”
“They were a reserve force in the 1960s. They were notorious for—”