Field of Blood (10 page)

sincerely that his Mary was a risk to his security, and he had smashed the man's

chin. Now he had shouted at her as if she was danger to him and his closest lieutenants.

`You are not obliged to say anything, unless you wish to do so, but what you say

may be put into writing and given in evidence ... You are Sean Pius McAnally?

'You know my name.'

There were two detectives with him in the Interrogation Room. He knew there was a father‐mother of a row over his arrest. He knew that if they had been expecting him then the detectives would have gone straight to work.

`63 The Drive, Turf Lodge?'

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High on the wall and facing him in the bare room was the camera. In the old days

they would have beaten him, half knocked hell out of him. He knew that the camera ensured that the detectives wouldn't touch him. He knew all the rules under which the detectives operated.

`You know where I live.'

`We'll call you Gingy, right?

'You call me what you like.' McAnally sat on a chair at a table. The detective who

asked the questions was behind him, standing. Across the table from him was the

detective with the notepad.

`Would you like to tell us where you were yesterday morning, Gingy?'

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**Don't reply. That's what the big men said. Think of your woman, think of your

kids, don't ever listen to what they say to you.

`Yesterday morning, Gingy. Tell us where you were.'

He looked at his finger nails. He saw the wrinkles in his hands, and the little cuts that came from the farm work down by the canal in the south.

`Prefer it if we told you where you were?'

Before the new rules were enforced in the Interrogation Rooms, he would have

been on the end of their boots and their fists, straight up, no messing. That's what they'd done to him way back, when he was married a week.

`Prefer it if I said you were in Crumlin Road yesterday morning, how about that,

Gingy?'

He hadn't broken the last time, not for all the slapping and the punching and the

kicking. The bastards knew how to do it, so there weren't bruises. Just so there

was the bloody pain.

`Gingy, you're in bad shape. You're identified. You're placed at Crumlin Road on

the R.P.G. team. That's murder three times. You're placed in Divis Street in the

getaway. That's attempted murder. That's a life sentence, Gingy. There isn't a way round that. Sitting on your bum and saying nothing, that's not a way out of

it. It'll be a life sentence with the judge's recommendation that you serve a minimum of twentyfive years. That's a bad scene, Gingy.'

He knew their trick. The trick was always to pretend they knew more than they

did.

`Twenty‐five years, Gingy, that's a hell of a bloody stretch. Is that what you came

back from the south for, to serve twenty‐five years?'

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He thought of Young Gerard twenty‐five years from now, and Little Patty, and Baby Sean. In twenty‐five years Roisin would be a greyhaired widow. In twentyfive years the kids would be grown up, left and married.

`Gingy, my book says that the man in the back of the getaway is the jewel. The

man beside him and the front passenger, they're the back‐up, and there's the driver. My book says that the jewel is the laddie who was on the R.P.G. My book

says that you're the jewel, Gingy McAnally ... and my book says that a big precious jewel like you goes down for twenty‐five years.'

Difficult for him to imagine Young Gerard as a grown man. A grown man who might travel to the Kesh to see his father, aging in an H Block. Young Gerard had

fought the bloody soldiers, bloody child and he had the loyalty to his father to fight the soldiers.

`Great future, isn't it, Gingy? You inside for twenty‐five years. What's the old woman going to do, Gingy? Good girl, is she? Keep herself good and clean and wait for you? What do you reckon, Gingy?'

He clamped his teeth together. He could smell the aftershave of the

detectives, and he could see their laundered and ironed shirts. They wore well cut

jackets and slacks with creases and shoes that were polished. He thought that when they had finished with him then they'd go and take a cup of coffee and a

sandwich, and at the end of the day they'd have a few beers, and they'd be pissing themselves laughing about Gingy McAnally.

`Please yourself, Gingy. This is just getting to know you, and you getting to know

us. This is just for you to know where you stand ... you'll be standing for twenty‐

five years, Gingy. That's all ... for now.'

They went to the door. They didn't bother to look back at him. The detective who

had asked the questions whispered something that McAnally couldn't hear to the

detective with the notebook, and they were chuckling as they went out.

A uniformed constable was framed in the open doorway. His face was

expressionless, cold. He nodded curtly for McAnally to come to the door.

From Rennie's office the information was fed to the Press Office at Police Headquarters on the Knock Road. From the Press Office the information was dispersed on the Not Attributable basis.

Lunchtime's local television news and the Belfast evening newspaper first

editions carried the report that àccording to senior police sources a man is in custody following an anonymous tip‐off, and is being questioned in connection 51

with inquiries into the murders yesterday of Judge William Simpson and his two

police bodyguards'.

Roisin McAnally watched the lunchtime news and felt vindicated.

The Secretary of State was handed a transcript of a radio broadcast, and was seen by an aide to sigh with relief.

David Ferris was given a digest of the news story carried in the evening newspaper. He had slept, he was rested, but he shook his head as if in confusion

when the Intelligence Officer drily explained the sophistiactions of 'psywar'. And

he hadn't time to stand around when he and Fusilier Jones were already late for

their Castlereagh appointment.

The Chief heard the radio, and was convinced, and waited for the men he had summoned to gather at the maisonette.

And Belfast went about its business. The shops were full in Royal Avenue, and the

bus stops were crowded by the City Hall. The city breathed and continued with its

life. And the disgust at a triple murder waned with the daylight.

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**Ìt wasn't the boys who brought him back from the South. I'd stake my life on

them,' said the Brigade's Adjutant.

Ìt's not any of those who were with Gingy at the Crumlin Road, or it wouldn't have been just Gingy who was lifted,' said the Brigade's Quartermaster.

Ànd all of us, we knew that Gingy was up from the South, and we knew what he

did.' The Chief spoke with a mock lightness, an ice tinkle in his voice.

`That's fucking ridiculous ... if one of us is a tout, then the whole fucking war's finished . . .' The hoarse response from the Brigade's Intelligence Officer. Ìf that's meant as a crack ...'

Ì tell you what I'm thinking, this is what I'm thinking ...' The Brigade Quartermaster was tugging at the Chief's sleeve for his attention. Ì'm thinking, is

Gingy McAnally one of us?

'What's that mean?

'It means that he quit. He walked out over the border.' `You've not told me what

you mean.'

`How's he going to be in there, that's putting it flat.' `What's you saying?'

`Shit, do I have to spell it?'

The Chief stared him out. `You have to spell it.'

The Brigade Quartermaster looked for the support of Intelligence

and Operations, didn't win their encouragement. Ì just wondered how

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Gingy would stand up in Castlereagh, because he'd run once ...' The accusation dried on his lips.

Ì brought Gingy McAnally up from the south, that's down to me,' the Chief said.

Ìf I brought him up then he's not a man to tout. And you're talking out of turn.

It's a liberty, diabolical, for you to be talking about Gingy McAnally, whether he'll turn, when some shit's just dropped him.'

Ìt was worth saying.'

Ànd I've answered it ... There was the boy that couriered him to the meeting with us.' The Chief's voice was a wind whisper. `That's Mattie Blaney's . . .'

Ì know who he is.' The face of the Chief was settled, as if everything before had

been preamble.

'Mattie Blaney's as true a Republican ...' Ì was at Mattie's wedding.'

Ìt would kill Mattie, to think his kid touted.'

`The boy who brought Gingy, when Gingy wasn't so keen, he saw only Gingy.'

The Chief smiled, a sad crisp smile. Ònly Gingy's been lifted.'

'Mattie's boy's only fourteen fucking years old.'

À tout's a tout.' The Chief slapped his hands together for effect. `Touts destroy

us. People have to learn that there's no future in touting.'

They went their way in silence. They went their way to hand out the order to those whom they could trust. They left their Chief to cross the landing to Mary and his bed. They left to find the men who would pick up Mattie Blaney's boy, the

boy who had been sitting on a car smoking and waiting to direct Sean Pius McAnally to a rendezvous before going to school.

Rennie walked with David Ferris and Fusilier Jones down the corridor that ran the

length of the ground floor Interrogation Rooms.

A far door opened. Two detectives spilled out. Hard on their heels came the prisoner and his escort.

The prisoner saw Rennie. His head had been down, his face was strain‐torn. He

saw Rennie and managed to snarl at him. A captured man with no chance of fighting to freedom.

The prisoner saw Ferris. The moment had been created by Rennie for a formal identification of the prisoner by Fusilier Jones. The prisoner saw Ferris and for an instant his defiance dissolved. Perhaps his mouth moved as if to speak, Ferris could not be certain, and he heard nothing, and Ferris couldn't help himself and

he smiled quickly.

Rennie saw this silent exchange. They flattened against the corridor wall to let the prisoner and escort pass.

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Rennie was pondering.

`Well?

'That's him, sir. That's Sean Pius McAnally, who I positively identify as being in the car in Divis Street,' Jones replied.

`Very good. We'll get you onto paper. Sorry for the performance, but it's necessary.' Rennie's voice died. He was watching Ferris's face, and he was watching Ferris's eyes that followed the prisoner away down the corridor.

5

In the old days of the Troubles, the days of Army supremacy, a military intelligence officer had once remarked of Howard Rennie, `Get blood out of granite, that one.' The remark had been thought amusing by a more junior officer, and over a glass in the Lisburn H.Q. Mess, it had been passed to the major

who acted as R.U.C. Liaison. Through the major's daily contacts it had travelled

to Police H.Q. The title of Granite

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**Rennie was now embedded in the lore of the police force. There were some senior officers who flitted in and out of the front line of the war. There were some who served two years in Criminal Investigation in Andersonstown or

Crossmaglen, before a transfer to the safer Protestant recesses of County Antrim

or County Down. Howard Rennie had never left the sharp end. He was now

serving his ninth year in Criminal Investigation, and before that he had endured

six years of Special Branch work.

He was now forty‐nine. He had enough years behind him for a reasonable

pension, and there were many commercial groups in the Province who would

have paid him handsomely to come onto their staffs as a security consultant. He

had never entertained the thought. Nor had he considered requesting a posting

to a desk job. Howard Rennie was a front‐line fighter.

His size and the intimidating cragginess of his face had fashioned for him a formidable reputation as an interrogator. Amongst the P.I.R.A. ranks, amongst men locked up and at liberty, he was a man marked down for killing.

His strength lay in the force of his belief in an ultimate victory. Not a victory tomorrow, or next week, or next year, but a sometime victory. He believed in the

day when the opposition would be drowned in their own filth, the day when their

ability to retaliate would finally have been destroyed. It was not a view shared in

high places, either in Police H.Q., or amongst the politicians from London who administered the Province. The opinion of Howard Rennie was reckoned to be 54

out of step with upper echelon thinking, and so he had stayed as a Detective Chief Inspector and been many times passed over for promotion to the rank of superintendent. His war was that of attrition. He could not contemplate an end to

the war that involved appeasement to his enemy. If there was to be a sometime

victory then it would have to come on Howard Rennie's terms.

The puffiness at the jowls was evidence of his fierce off‐duty drinking. He would

have denied angrily that he was an alcoholic, he would have said that he drank as

much as the next man, and no more. Because of that high profile police work he