The nice part of Belfast.
Parks, the Lagan, trees, attractive houses spilling down to the water’s edge. You’d hardly think there was a war going on.
“You’d hardly think there was a war going on,” I said.
“This is what it’s like on my farm,” Crabbie said. “If we didn’t have TV we could be living in the good old days.”
Belvoir Park Records Office was in the same complex as the Belvoir Park Forensic Science Laboratory. A top-notch, modern, state of the art facility for processing evidence from all the criminal cases in Northern Ireland and even some cases from Scotland and the Republic of Ireland too.
A few years after our visit a 3,000-pound IRA truck bomb, that you could hear up to twenty miles away, reduced the entire structure to rubble, but that was in the future and on this particular March morning everything was shiny, sparkling and new.
The B Special records were in a sub-basement in old cardboard files that were covered with dust and mildew. If someone in RUC Clerical had really cared about preserving these records they would have been transferred to microfiche, but no one gave a shit about the B Specials, who’d been in them and what they had done.
The librarian, an ancient WPC called Fogerty, took us to the shelf stacks and explained that the records were alphabetised by last name.
“That should be easy enough to sort out,” I said.
But, of course, it wasn’t.
Harry Selden’s cardboard file was there all right, under S, but the paper documentation inside the file was missing. Francis Deauville’s cardboard file was there all right, but the paper documentation inside the file was also missing.
WPC Fogerty was perplexed. “I don’t understand it,” she said. “Even if they never made a single arrest or ever even turned up for duty, at the very least there should be date of birth, height, weight, home address, total pay, date of swearing-in and date of discharge.”
I showed her the empty files. “There’s not even a blank piece of paper. There’s nothing at all. Is that usual?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never really looked through these files.”
“Let’s do some random sampling.”
We looked through thirty or forty random B Special personnel and not a single one of them was completely empty and most had several pages of documentation detailing the reserve policeman’s arrests, etc.
“This is most unusual,” WPC Fogerty said.
“Who has access to these files?” I asked.
“Anyone who has access to the records building. As soon as you’re inside all you have to do is walk down the stairs to the basement.”
“And who has access to this building?”
“Anyone with a police, army or grade 4 civil service ID would have access,” she said.
“So that would be how many people in Northern Ireland?” I asked.
“Thousands,” she said.
“Tens of thousands,” Lawson corrected.
“If you wanted to take a file with you, how would you do that?”
“Oh, you can’t take these files out of the building. You can photocopy them if you want but they can’t leave the building. I make sure everyone’s aware of that and you have to come past the librarian’s desk when you leave.”
“But what’s to stop you just walking out with the contents of the files rolled up in a newspaper or shoved in your pocket?”
“No one’s ever stolen a file,” she protested.
“Au contraire, WPC Fogerty. Someone indeed has stolen the files of Francis Deauville and Harry Selden. What about CCTV cameras on the front gate?”
“Well yes, but we have 200 personnel in here and we get thousands of visitors to the RUC, RIC and army records rooms upstairs.”
“Would you have any idea when these files could have been removed?” I asked.
“No. They could even have been taken from the old RUC HQ building before we moved here a year ago. And the records department there was open access. No cameras. Just flashed your ID to the security guard.”
“So even if I got young Lawson here to go through the CCTV footage from the front gate checking every single visitor you’ve ever had in this facility—”
“Why me?” Lawson protested.
“… ever had in his facility to see if any of them are suspicious, and I don’t even know how he would possibly determine that, it wouldn’t actually make any difference because the files could have been removed from the old RUC HQ building, where there were no CCTV cameras in the records department?”
“That’s right.”
I sighed. “And there are no copies anywhere else?”
“No,” WPC Fogerty said.
“Thank you very much WPC Fogerty, you’ve been very helpful,” I said.
Outside to the Beemer. Even in the police forensic lab car park I got down on my knees to check for mercury tilt switch bombs.
We had an early lunch in Belfast and then decided to drive up to Derry for what felt like the millionth time in this investigation.
Brave face on it for the lads, but the fear.
The fucking fear.
Deep waters.
Hits ordered in from Dublin.
Hit pieces in the newspapers.
What kind of a case was this? Who wanted it to end? And why?