Sins of the Fathers (19 page)

‘I need to speak to him. Urgently,’ Mower said. ‘He’s still got his mobile switched off.’

‘His father told me there’s no reception to speak of where he’s staying. Don’t worry. I’ll ask him to call you. Okay?’

‘I suppose so,’ Mower said reluctantly.

‘I must go or I won’t get a hire car. We’ll be in touch, Kevin, I promise.’ And with that Mower had to be content.

It was pitch dark when Laura drove into Ballymalone and for a queasy second she wondered if Joe Thackeray had been right in directing her here to seek out Michael Thackeray’s uncle Sean O’Donnell. Joe admitted that the address he had was an old one, and he had had no contact with Molly Thackeray’s family since she died. But Laura had checked the address with international telephone inquiries. There had been no reply to her calls but she felt confident enough then to book a flight and hire a car and drive the long winding road to County Sligo. She had nothing to do with her weekend and suddenly sorting out her relationship with Michael Thackeray seemed like an urgent priority. Now, parked at the kerb and gazing down the almost deserted village street, she wondered what sort of a fool she had been.

The village was long and straggly, the main street lit by only a handful of orange street lamps and the glow which filtered onto the damp pavements from the four or five bars that were scattered amongst the rows of cottages fronting onto the road. Close to what she assumed was the centre, where a couple of tightly closed up shops nestled together, there was a single taller building, of three or four stories, with the single word ‘Hotel’ painted on the gable end above some sort of faded advertisement she could not make out in the dark. She parked outside, zipped up her jacket against the soft but persistent rain, and went up a couple of steps into a deserted foyer. From somewhere at the back there came the sound of conversation and laughter, but here all was quiet as the grave.

She banged a large brass bell on the reception desk and eventually a slight young woman dressed in a black miniskirt and red sweater, with her dark hair tied back from a creamy, oval face emerged from a door at the end of the hall.

‘Will you be wanting a room?’ she asked, with a look of sympathy for the rain-soaked traveller.

‘I’m not sure yet,’ Laura said. ‘I’m looking for someone called Sean O’Donnell and I can’t find any street names here in the dark. Do you know him by any chance.’

‘Sure, everyone knows Sean. Didn’t he used to be the post-master? But he’s retired now. You’ve only just missed him. He was in the bar just a moment ago now with his son Patrick and his nephew. He’ll be home by now if he went straight there. You’ll have a car?’

Laura nodded. So at least Michael was here, she thought. Joe had been right when he had said that if he had gone to Ireland at all he would be sure to call on the O’Donnells where he had spent his childhood summers. He had sounded almost jealous of a relationship with his wife’s family that he had never been able to share. His sheep had kept him tied to the farm, twelve months out of twelve, he had muttered down the phone somewhat bitterly. But then Laura already knew that Joe’s resentments were deep and wide ranging and included her own and Michael’s lack of his all-consuming religious faith.

‘Then drive through the village that way,’ the receptionist went on cheerfully, pointing Laura’s way. ‘And when you come to the new bungalows on the left set back a bit from the road, Sean’s is the second one.’

Laura followed the receptionist’s instructions and found herself parked outside a low white bungalow surrounded by an extensive patch of garden and lit by a bright light on the porch. She gazed at the house for a moment feeling slightly sick. She was far from sure that Michael would welcome this intrusion and had no idea what his uncle would make of the unexpected arrival of another visitor from over the water. With some trepidation, she locked the car, left her
overnight bag in the boot, and, taking a deep gulp of soft, damp air to steady her nerve, walked up the gravelled path to the front door to find out.

Her ring was answered by a tall, burly figure whom Laura thought for a disorientated second was Thackeray himself, before realising that it was someone else who looked uncannily like him.

‘Is Michael Thackeray here?’ she asked, uncertainly.

‘Who wants him?’ the stranger asked, but even before she could reply Thackeray himself appeared in the hallway, his astonishment tinged with anxiety.

‘It’s all tight, Patrick,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how she got here but this is my girlfriend, Laura. My cousin, Patrick.’ Thackeray’s introduction was cursory and he took Laura’s arm firmly and hustled her into the house, closing the door quickly behind her.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he asked. Patrick O’Donnell, and his father, who had also appeared in the hall holding a glass of whisky in his hand, gazed at her in open curiosity.

‘I thought you might be pleased to see me,’ Laura said tartly. Thackeray glanced at his relatives and offered Laura a tentative kiss on one cheek.

‘I am,’ he said quietly in her ear. ‘Believe me, I am. But coming here was not a very good idea.’

Sean O’Donnell took her wet coat and led the way into the warm and comfortable living room, where thick curtains were drawn against the wet and increasingly windy weather outside. She took the glass of whisky he offered her gratefully and sank onto the sofa beside Thackeray.

‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t contact Michael any other way and I really needed to see him,’ she explained to the two O’Donnells.

‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Laura,’ the older man said, although his eyes were full of anxiety.

Later, after sandwiches and some strained conversation, Patrick left for his own home and Sean, obviously reluctantly, conceded that Laura should stay the night, watching the two of them sombrely as they moved into Thackeray’s bedroom. Laura sat on the edge of the bed, only too conscious that her arrival might have caused friction which she really did not understand. Thackeray stood with his back to the door, his face in shadow and his eyes unreadable and when he explained the real purpose of his visit to Ireland, she shivered slightly.

‘You think Christie was in the IRA?’ she asked incredulously.

‘No, I didn’t say that,’ Thackeray said wearily. ‘I think Christie was in hiding, and if it was just some gangland thing, we’d have found out about it by now. He’d have turned up on some database somewhere, fingerprints, DNA, a known associate of someone or other. But with the spooks involved, trying to keep his picture under wraps, and knowing he was probably an ex-soldier, all the rest of it, I think it’s more likely to originate here. It’s a long shot, a wild hunch, the super would say, but it’s all I’ve got to go on. I’m getting nowhere at home. In fact everything anyone can do to close the investigation down is being done, which only confirms my suspicions. If Gordon Christie and his family were executed I want to know why. My uncle has contacts, I knew that before I came. He’ll test my theory, no more than that, hopefully get me an ID, and then I’ll come home. But it’s not safe for you to stay here. It’s offering a hostage to fortune. As Sean has told me somewhat forcefully, a British policeman asking questions about terrorists could annoy people. I
was foolish to come. And you must go home, Laura, you really must.’

‘Did Kevin Mower contact you?’ she asked. Thackeray shook his head impatiently, but listened, increasingly grimly, as Laura told him about the sudden deterioration in Emma Christie’s condition.

‘I don’t know what the hell Jack Longley is playing at. But I’ll talk to Kevin tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I switched my mobile off because I didn’t want to be traced here. In any case, the reception’s poor.’

‘You know it wasn’t just because of this wretched case that I came to find you,’ she said quietly.

‘I know,’ he said.

‘I need to know where we’re going, Michael, if anywhere. We can’t go on as we are. It’s killing me.’

Thackeray crossed the room and sat down on the bed beside her, and put his arm around her. He sat in silence for a long time as if unable to put his thoughts into words. And when he finally spoke it was slowly, as if each word was wrung from him against his will.

‘I don’t know where I’m going, or what I’m doing half the time,’ he said. ‘It’s been like that since Aileen died. You’d think it would be a liberation after all that time but it doesn’t feel like that. I want to move on but all the anger and grief from what happened keeps dragging me back. Can you understand that?’

Laura shook her head, her eyes full of tears. ‘You can’t let it wreck your whole life,’ she said. ‘I love you. I thought I was your future.’

‘You are,’ he said, and took her in his arms fiercely. ‘Believe me, you are,’ he said. After a few moments he pulled away and began to help her undress. The sexual chemistry that had always been there between them
suddenly overwhelmed everything else.

‘We must be very quiet,’ he said, a flicker of laughter in his eyes as he dropped his own clothes in a heap on the floor. ‘We’ve already shocked old uncle Sean’s Catholic soul to its roots. He’ll be off to confession in the morning to beg absolution for letting you stay overnight.’

‘Well, I hope it gives the priest a thrill,’ Laura whispered as she pulled him towards her. ‘Because I’ve every intention of making love to you until morning.’ But in her heart she knew that the reconciliation was only half achieved. There were things she needed to tell Michael Thackeray and, at that moment, she could not bear even to begin.

Michael Thackeray’s mood the next morning, as his uncle drove him north from Ballymalone, was as uncertain as the Irish weather, which was still hurling dark clouds across the sky from the west, and occasionally sheeting the coast road with squalls of rain. To the left the Atlantic could occasionally be glimpsed lashing rocky cliffs and outcrops, and rolling in a tumult of foam up broad sandy beaches. To the right, through the mist, there were occasional glimpses of the Dartry mountains, where they tumbled down towards the sea.

He and Laura had been wakened by Sean O’Donnell soon after seven, emerging bleary-eyed and reluctant from their bed to be fed a generous breakfast of bacon and eggs in Sean’s spacious kitchen. But Thackeray’s uncle was obviously not in a totally hospitable mood, and as soon as they had finished eating he waved Thackeray into the sitting room, with a warning glance at Laura which left her brooding over her tea feeling angry and excluded.

‘I made some inquiries, and I can take you to someone who may be able to help you,’ O’Donnell had said quietly. ‘But just you, not your young woman. And after, you’re to leave Ireland immediately. Those are the terms. You can take them or leave them.’

‘I’ll take them,’ Thackeray said, without hesitation. ‘But what about Laura?’

‘She can stay here,’ O’Donnell said. ‘Then you can both go back to Dublin together when we get back.’

‘Are we going far?’

‘Up the coast beyond Sligo. A place called Bundoran, a holiday place, just over into Donegal. Did I not take you and your mother there with your cousins when you were a wee lad? We went right up to Tullan strand?’

‘I think you did,’ Thackeray said, recalling a chilly wind on a long golden beach and abundant tacky amusement arcades in Main Street where five over-excited little boys had taken shelter from the showers. ‘Not too far, then?’

‘Not too far. We’ll be back by mid-afternoon, tell your young woman, and then you must go.’

His ‘young woman’ had been less than enchanted by the arrangement, Thackeray recalled grimly, but he had persuaded her in the end that he would be safe with O’Donnell and that she should remain indoors until they returned. By nine they had been on the road, skirting the centre of Sligo itself in driving rain and then heading up the coast towards Donegal, with the Atlantic on their left and the border with Northern Ireland only a few miles to their right. It was the point where the Republic of Ireland was most nearly cut in two by the British state.

They drove largely in silence, each absorbed with their own thoughts as O’Donnell took the quiet, winter
rain-lashed
road quickly and skilfully. In less than two hours they were driving slowly down the long main street of Bundoran, lined on each side with bars, amusements and souvenir shops, many of them closed at this time of year. At length O’Donnell pulled up outside the Crazy Horse bar, an American saloon where the decorative lights swung
and glittered through the rain, as if trying to persuade any intrepid passers-by that the Irish winter did not exist.

‘This is it,’ he said, without enthusiasm. ‘Are you sure about this, Michael? These are not people to trust.’

‘You don’t need to be involved,’ Thackeray said. ‘I’ll go in by myself.’

‘No,’ O’Donnell said. ‘I made the arrangement. They’ll expect me to be with you. If you like, I’m the hostage. They’ll know where to find me afterwards – if they need to.’

Thackeray looked at his uncle for a moment, appalled at the implications of what he had said, but O’Donnell just shrugged and got out of the car.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

At first they thought the place was deserted. It was huge space, and appeared completely empty, the tables bare and no one in sight behind the great circular mahogany bar. But at one end of the room, where the lights had been switched off, no doubt deliberately, they saw three men seated at a table, two facing them and one with his back turned. As they approached the two men who had their back to the wall stood up and approached them, barring their way.

‘O’Donnell?’ one asked, and Thackeray’s uncle nodded.

‘Lift your arms, the both of you,’ the second man instructed, and they ran expert hands over their visitors to check, Thackeray assumed, for weapons or recorders. His mouth felt dry as, evidently satisfied, the men waved the two of them into the seats against the wall that they had just vacated, facing the third man who had so far not even glanced in their direction. The searchers took up a position behind the seated man, arms loose at their sides but still full of menace.

Thackeray found himself facing a hunched, cadaverous
figure, elderly but quite how elderly it was almost impossible to guess. His face was grey and lined, his mouth thin and unsmiling, and his eyes intensely blue and totally without warmth.

‘So you’re an English policeman bold enough to come asking questions here,’ he said in a voice so low that it was difficult to hear. His accent was unequivocally Belfast born-and-bred. ‘Do the Garda know what you’re about?’

‘No,’ Thackeray said. He could see no point in lying. He was sure this man would know the answer to his question already. ‘I came to see my uncle.’ He nodded at O’Donnell who gave him the most tentative of nods in return. ‘I also hoped I might be able to identify someone I’m looking for, as it’s been suggested he has – or had – Irish connections. No one official knows I’m here, in Dublin or at home.’

The man nodded and was silent for a moment, as if considering these answers carefully. The silence was oppressive and the man’s two minders tensed, as if ready for action. Thackeray tried to control his breathing, knowing exactly how nasty the situation he had put himself and Sean O’Donnell into could turn.

‘And this man you’re looking for, whoever he is, what has he done?’ his interrogator asked at last.

‘His family were found shot and he’s disappeared,’ Thackeray said. ‘We think the father shot them but we’re not sure. It’s possible they were executed. All the evidence points to the family being in hiding for some reason. We think the reason may lie this side of the water.’

‘Show me your photograph.’ Thackeray handed it over and the man on the other side of the table gazed at it for some time without comment before handing it back. Thackeray would not have thought it possible that those blank eyes could become colder but they had.

‘His name is Gordon Robertson,’ he said. ‘And you’re right to think that you’re not the only ones seeking him out. We thought he’d gone to Spain. He was the one who got away from an atrocity of our own.’

‘Meaning?’ Thackeray asked, unable to keep the tiny surge of excitement out of his voice.

‘Six years ago in Derry, before the latest cessation, one of our volunteers was eating his evening meal at home with his family. There was a knock on the front door and before his father could prevent him one of the children opened it without checking who was there. Four men burst in and shot our man and the entire family, the wife, three children, no survivors. The killers were members of a Protestant splinter group, people who reckoned the UDA wasn’t tough enough. Three of them were later arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. Gordon Robertson was never picked up.’

‘The whole family was killed?’ Thackeray said softly.

‘The whole family.’

‘And now his whole family has been shot.’

‘If you’re thinking what I imagine you’re thinking, Mr Thackeray, I’d put the idea out of your head completely. To my knowledge no one from my organisation had found Gordon Robertson or offered him any harm, although you may be sure that there are some in Derry who would dearly like to. But there’s more to this story. It’s just as likely that his own associates would gun him down if they ever came across him again. And maybe kill his family as well. There was plenty of talk in Derry after the shootings about the reason Robertson got away. The arrests were too quick, the evidence against the three others too readily forthcoming. It was widely believed that Robertson was working for the British security forces – before the shootings, maybe, and certainly afterwards. It’s my belief that you should be
asking your questions much closer to home. I’d wager Gerry Adams’ peace agreement that your own security people, and ours in Dublin, know all about Gordon Robertson and where he’s been holed up for the last six years. If they don’t they’re not as good at what they do as they pretend to be.’

‘I’ll ask them,’ Thackeray said. He took the photograph from the table and put it away in his pocket. ‘I’m grateful for your information,’ he said.

‘We have never deliberately waged war on children,’ the old man said. Thackeray took a sharp breath at the hypocrisy of that, but said nothing. The old man was evidently not finished.

‘I want you to go as quickly as you came, Mr Thackeray. It was a very foolish thing you did, coming here. Go home now, and your family in Ballymalone will be safe enough. Talk to no one on the way. I don’t want to hear from you or your colleagues again.’ There were no overt threats but the menace in his voice was palpable. Thackeray doubted that he had ever been so close to the total ruthlessness of the fanatic, and hoped he never would be again.

The two looming figures behind the old man made clear that the interview was over and Thackeray and O’Donnell made their way quickly back to their car, turned around, and headed back the way they had come. A little way out of Bundoran Sean O’Donnell pulled into the side of the road and switched off the engine. He was trembling.

‘I’d not be doing that again, Michael, if I were you,’ he said. ‘I take it you learned what you wanted to know?’

‘Oh yes,’ Thackeray said. ‘I know what to do now. All I can say is thank you. Will it put you in any danger?’

‘Not if you do as you’re told and leave the country,’ O’Donnell said.

‘I won’t ask you how you arranged it.’

‘Best not,’ O’Donnell said. ‘Take it from me, you only need to know one man of violence, and this close to the Border we all think we know one at least. With a family history like ours, it’s enough.’

‘Evidently,’ Thackeray said. ‘Do you want me to drive? You look shattered.’

O’Donnell nodded, his face creased with tiredness.

‘Shattered is an understatement, Michael,’ he said. ‘And we shouldn’t hang about. You can be sure you’ll be watched all the way home.’

Sergeant Kevin Mower was slumped in an armchair in Laura Ackroyd’s living room, designer jeaned legs stretched out, hands behind his head, but his dark eyes looked anything but relaxed. Thackeray had called him from Manchester airport and the returning travellers had found him sitting outside the tall Victorian house in his car, the faint thump of dance music disturbing the late night peace. As Thackeray had gone ahead to open the doors and switch off the alarm, Mower had touched Laura’s arm briefly to hold her back.

‘Did you tell him about Newsom?’ he asked. Laura shook her head briefly and put a finger to her lips.

‘I will, I will,’ she murmured, although she did not entirely believe it herself. Mower said nothing, walking into the flat ahead of her and flinging himself into the armchair with a faint shrug, although he could not hide the anger in his eyes. Laura went into the kitchen to make coffee and hide her own distress. After a night and a day when her relationship with Thackeray had regained some semblance of normality she had pushed the memory of her disastrous evening with Vince Newsom to the back of her
mind and passionately wished to keep it there. But she guessed that in the end she could not.

‘I don’t believe you two,’ Mower said, after listening to a brief description of their trip. ‘You actually talked to the IRA?’

‘Provisionals,’ Thackeray said.

‘Just like that?’

‘Not quite, just like that,’ Thackeray said carefully. ‘Not with my family’s history. I always suspected my grandfather had been involved, on the fringes at least.’

‘Jesus wept,’ Mower said. ‘And your uncle?’

‘No, not my uncle. I used to go over there in the Seventies when the recent troubles were at their height. He was quite obviously appalled by what was happening. But he’s a fierce republican, for all that. My mother was too.’

Laura watched Mower’s reaction with a faint smile. She had heard parts of Thackeray’s family history which she had never heard before, the Irish parts, on the long journey home, but she knew that many people in England found it hard to distinguish between a political republican and a terrorist.

‘Don’t worry about it, Kevin,’ she said. ‘Nothing illegal happened, and Michael found out what he wanted to know about Christie.’

‘So he’s not Christie, which we suspected anyway, and which confirms something I’ve been told,’ Mower said. ‘I’ll fill you in on that in a minute. So you reckon he was hiding from the Provos?’

‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that,’ Thackeray said. ‘I’m sure the Provos would think nothing of shooting him if they stumbled across him again, but I didn’t get the impression they were looking very hard. My man may have been lying, of course. But he also said that his own side
wanted him as well, so that’s another possibility. I don’t think the unionists want to congratulate him on what he did. It’s very nasty, very Irish.’ He shrugged.

‘They think he gave evidence against them?’ Mower asked.

‘Something like that. He was never charged, never appeared in court, but the rest of them are serving life and he vanished,’ Thackeray said. ‘Or they were serving life. It’s possible they’ve been released now under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. We need to check that out tomorrow. If they’re out of gaol it may explain why Christie’s cover seems to have been blown now, and not earlier. And maybe why he and the family were attacked.’

‘So we’re looking for a bunch of Ulster Protestant thugs out for revenge?’ Mower asked incredulously. ‘Or the Provisional IRA? Terrific. The super’s really going to love you for this.’

Thackeray smiled thinly.

‘I doubt very much we’ll be invited to Derry to pursue our inquiries,’ he said. ‘This is way over our heads.’

‘No wonder the spooks were getting their knickers in a twist,’ Mower said. ‘But as it happens, I’m one step ahead of you on this. I put out feelers of my own with a man I know – ex-Met, but more importantly, ex-army. He gave me a slightly different ID.’