“You think I’m an IRA mole? Me? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This is what you geniuses in internal affairs have come up with?” I said, addressing the two Special Branch goons.
“A Catholic boy from Derry, who we know attempted to join the Provisional IRA after Bloody Sunday,” Nelson began. “Know that for a fact from a number of sources. Who we know has had numerous disciplinary and other offences, yet mysteriously manages not to get the sack even when I personally get him to give me his resignation. Whose case files have never involved the prosecution of a single IRA man. Not one. For anything. Not so much as a parking ticket. Maybe instead of attempting to join the IRA in 1972 you did in fact—”
“March zipped by, didn’t it? I didn’t realise it was April the first already,” I said.
“Did in fact join the IRA and have been working for the Provisionals ever since,” Nelson said.
“If I were a mole wouldn’t it be smarter to have me prosecute a few low-ranking IRA guys and have me rise up the ranks in the RUC? Wouldn’t it be more efficacious for me to join the intel branch or, here’s a thought, Special Branch?”
“You might not be the only one. There might be dozens of you,” Nelson said.
I looked at Sergeant Price and McArthur.
“You don’t have to say anything without a solicitor present, Sean,” Sergeant Price reminded me.
I pulled out a bottle of whisky from my desk drawer. “Can all of you gentlemen please leave my office? I have work to do.”
“Sean, these men have come all the way from Castlereagh to put these allegations to you,” McArthur said.
“And they can go all the way back to Castlereagh.”
“You’re not even going to attempt an explanation?” Nelson said.
“An explanation? I was doing police work. You should fucking try it some time.”
“Why did you evade us yesterday?” McWhirter asked.
“What do you mean?”
“We were following your car on the Strabane Road,” McWhirter said.
“Were you? I never noticed. You must have been doing an amazing job. Normally I’m pretty observant about these things. Now listen, I’m a busy man, so unless you’ve got an arrest warrant in another brown envelope, which I don’t think you have … well then, you know, fuck off.”
Nelson stood and put the manila envelope under his arm. “This time it won’t be you getting the sack, pal, it’ll be you getting the sack and then going to the old grey bar hotel. You could be looking at twenty years, Duffy. But don’t worry, I hear they treat policemen really well inside. We’ll be talking again,” he said.
“I don’t think we will.”
Nelson and McWhirter left and I waved Sergeant Price away with them.
That only left the Chief Inspector. He took the seat opposite me and refused a drink when offered.
“What’s all this about, Sean?”
“This guy in Derry, Harry Selden, he’s up to his neck in the Deauville murder case. I went to an old friend of mine, Ken Kirkpatrick, to get the lowdown on Selden.”
“Is this Kirkpatrick chap in the IRA?”
“He is, but he’s a friend of mine who has helped me out with info in the past. He gave me some good stuff about Selden.”
“Well?”
“Selden is a low-level IRA commander and a medium-level Sinn Fein politician. Ken filled me in on all that.”
“What does he have to do with the Deauville case?”
“Quite a lot, I think. Deauville and Selden served together in the B Specials. And Selden’s car was seen following the Deauvilles shortly before Mr Deauville’s murder. He claimed it had been stolen. He wasn’t driving it because he was in the hospital, but I don’t like the coincidence.”
“Who was driving the car?”
“We don’t have eyewitness testimony because our eyewitness, Elena Deauville, has vanished.”
“What about that artist’s sketch you have?”
“Looks nothing like Selden.”
McArthur leaned back in the chair, put his head in his hands and sighed. “Special Branch thinking one of my men is an IRA infiltrator? The timing is awful,” he muttered.
“Yeah I know, I’m sorry, sir, what with your promotion board coming up.”
He hadn’t meant to say that out loud and he was embarrassed now. He stood up, straightened his tie.
He leaned on the desk and looked at me. “Man to man, you’re not an IRA mole are you, Duffy?” he asked.
I almost laughed in his face. Laughter of despair this time. If senior policemen thought moles could be found by simply asking them outright it was pretty worrying. And if even McArthur thought I might be a mole, what the fuck had I achieved here at Carrickfergus RUC? What had I achieved in my entire police career? Nicking a few villains here and there while all around me King Chaos ran his Carnivale.
“No, sir, I’m not the mole.”
“Good show, Duffy. I believe you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Maybe you should lie low for a bit, take the rest of the day off, couple of days maybe?”
“Won’t that look rather suspicious?”
“Everything you do will look suspicious from now on but why stir the pot?”
When he’d gone I called the only influential friend I had left.
“Hello?”
“Sir, it’s me, Sean Duffy, I’m sorry to bother you.”